If you noticed a lot of postings about Samsung rebates for some kind of NFL-related promotion, you may have wondered if these are legitimate. Answer: I don’t know, but they appear to be. On the rare day when I have time to look over the list of recent entries, I sometimes remove any that are obviously bogus. This is actually very rare. But, if I see that it’s clear that one person has posted essentially the same complaint several times, I’ll remove the extra postings.
In this case, I’ve looked over the postings and they appear real. I think the reason we have so many is that people have posted links to this site to let other customers know that if they have a problem with the Samsung NFL promotion, they can look here for more information (or can post their own experience here).
So, I think that’s why we have so many of these in a short period of time. If you know anything to the contrary, please tell me via the site’s contact form.
I received the following e-mail from a representative of TRENDnet and have only just now had time to post it. I have not tried to verify whether this letter is accurate, but I have no reason to believe otherwise. Here it is:
from Zak Wood
to RebateReportCard@gmail.com
date Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 8:28 PM
subject James Barger: Message from TRENDnet
Dear Mr. Barger,
I am contacting you from TRENDnet, a networking hardware brand based near Los Angeles. Recently, a mail-in-rebate provider that we were using (and many other brands) went bankrupt and reneged on payments related to a batch of mail-in-rebate checks. TRENDnet has taken immediate action to correct this issue.
I was wondering where would be the appropriate place to post a message to TRENDnet customers on your site.
And, a note to TRENDnet customers and employees… I apologize for the delay it posting this. Law school and work and family are keeping me insanely busy.
There’s a new website called Rebate Remedy where you can sell your rebate and get paid right away, instead of waiting around for the manufacturer or retailer to send you a check. Of course, you have to sacrifice a percentage of the original rebate offer amount, but you get peace of mind and immediate satisfaction.
Here’s how it seems to work… Let’s say you bought a new computer or HDTV that came with a $100 rebate offer from the manufacturer. You take home the computer or HDTV, with the receipt and rebate paperwork. Now, you have a choice. You could fill out the forms and mail in whatever the small print in the rebate offer says you need to send, then wait around for the check to arrive. Or, you could go to Rebate Remedy and sell your rebate to them for (nearly) immediate payment of 75% of the rebate’s face value.
So, how do you decide what to do? You come back here, to Rebate Report Card, and do a quick search for Acme Electronics, or whatever the manufacturer name is, and see what grades they have and what people have said about their ability to pay their rebates quickly.
Maybe you’ll find that dozens of people have waited an average of 8 months for their checks to arrive. Perhaps 5 or 6 people never got their rebate at all, because the company didn’t like the way they filled out their forms. Maybe after reading these reports, you decide you’d prefer to have a guaranteed, quick $75 instead of maybe getting $100 in eight months or maybe getting nothing.
If you decide the latter, you could go to Rebate Remedy and sell them your troubles and wash your hands of the whole mess. They get to try to collect the $100 from the manufacturer. If they fail, you still keep your $100. If they succeed, they’ve made a profit.
The guys at Rebate Remedy asked me to take a look at their website and read about their service. It sounds like a good idea to me. I hope it works out well for everyone. This sounds like a good example of capitalism leading to compromises in which everyone gets a good deal.
The main purpose of Rebate Report Card is to help consumers figure out which rebates are actually a good deal. If you see a rebate for $100 from a company that takes forever to send out the checks and often refuses to pay at all, well, maybe that’s not such a good deal after all. Maybe it would be best to rule out that rebate in your cost calculations.
Currently, the best way to evaluate a rebate offer is to go to the Rebate Report Card search page and put in the name of the store or manufacturer offering the rebate. If the search results are too large, you can narrow down the search by selecting the product category or by choosing to only see how many “A” grades there are, etc.
Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of all that information though. After all, the fact that Company X got a lot of “D” grades might not be such a bad thing, if the average on the website is an “F”. We all know the reports on this site will tend to be slanted toward the negative, just because human psychology doesn’t drive us to report “normal” or “good” experiences as much as the frustrating ones.
So, in the near future, I’ll be improving the site to make it easier to see how any particular company stacks up to the rest of the companies that we know about. I might do this by grading on a curve, or maybe I’ll create some sort of “index” number to show alongside the grades. In any case, it’ll be simple and easy to understand.
If you have other suggestions, please post them over on the message board. Or, use the contact page to send me an idea.
You can expect to see the improved rating system by the end of the year. It would have been nice to get it in before the holiday shopping season, but I’ve been pretty busy applying to law schools lately. I’ll let you know how that goes too.
As the publisher of this website, I am very well aware of the many pitfalls of main-in rebates. But, let me play the “devil’s advocate” today and pose some thoughts on the up-side of mail-in rebates. These won’t be new ideas. I’ve come across this line of thinking on various message boards and blogs. This is just my concise summary.
The companies offering rebates expect only a fraction of consumers to complete the rebate submission process and get their money. Let’s say that’s 40 percent. Now, if they sell a computer with a $100 rebate, they can make a $900 computer feel like an $800 computer, because the consumer says “Hey, I’ll just get that rebate money and it’ll only cost me $800.”
Of course, 60 percent of the people who buy the computer will never get through the whole rebate process to collect their money. So, of course, the company takes in more than $800 per computer, on average. In our simplified example, they’d get $860 per computer sold. So, they’re able to sell computers to the frugal people who will only pay $800, while still keeping profits at a level that an $860 computer would produce.
Now, the losers in this scenario are the people who forget to fill out the rebate forms, those who fill them out but don’t get around to mailing them, those who mail them but find out they made some trivial mistake on the forms, those who do everything right and are told they didn’t, those who get their money only after waiting six months, and those who never get their money at all.
The winners are the people who got their rebates in a reasonable amount of time and have an $860 computer, which was technically a $900 computer, for the price of $800.
So, is it good for the whole community to have lower prices for 40% of the people at the expense of the other 60%? I suppose it depends on how much of the non-rebating you blame on the company and how much on the consumer. If you think the consumer was just lazy or irresponsible or just didn’t want the money all that much, then the mail-in rebates are great. On the other hand, if you think the whole process is based on a deception, then you’re probably saying mail-in rebates should be eliminated.
If companies make the rebate process easier, then maybe 80 or 90 percent of buyers will get their rebates. As that number goes up, logical people have to ask themselves, what’s the point of the rebate? Why not just lower the asking price? Well, as we saw in our example, the asking price will never be as low as the after-rebate price, because of the built in assumption that many rebates are not fulfilled. The price might come down to $890 or $880 for our fictional computer. But, without rebates, it likely won’t hit $800 (until the value of the computer goes down, of course).
That’s the story of the numbers. What about the human aspect? Is there some value to having a system that treats people with respect and “feels” sane and reasonable? The corporate bean counter might say “Yes, but how much is that worth in dollars?” Do we really need to figure that out? Or, are we just so tired of the hassle of mail-in rebates that we don’t care. Maybe that computer will cost everyone a little more cash and we’ll all get more time to live our lives and a bit less stress in the bargain. Do we have a deal?
The people over at Staples must be doing something right. They have the best record of anyone listed on Rebate Report Card. As of this writing, they have 12 reports and a grade of “B” (81% to be precise). That’s pretty good for this grading system.
You have to remember that people are a lot more likely to come to our website when they have a complaint, as opposed to a compliment. So, when you see that 12 people took the time to report their experience with Staples and the average grade comes out to a “B,” you have to assume things are going pretty smoothly, on the whole, in the Staples rebate system.
Staples has something they call “easy rebates” and they appear to still have traditional mail-in rebates (some of which don’t qualify for the “easy rebates” program). I don’t know if it’s only the “easy rebates” that are getting good grades here. But, even if it is, that’s still pretty good, compared to most retailers.
You also have to remember that most rebates are not offered by the retailer. They’re offered by the manufacturer. Maybe Staples (and other companies) gets some credit they’re not really due, and likewise for the complaints. But, it should all average out in the end.
So, take a look at the stats and decide for yourself. Maybe the numbers have changed since the time I wrote this.
The verdict is in, on the question of how long one should be expected to wait for rebates.
According to Rebate Report Card visitors, 8 weeks is as long as we should have to wait. Anything beyond that is a bit unreasonable. And, nobody thinks 12 weeks or more is a good idea.
Just check out the “News and Polls” page to see the details and cast your own vote.
Most companies are working against their best interests when make rebate instructions difficult to follow and keep rebate deadlines as short as possible. They think they are maximizing profit by reducing the chance that the consumer will succeed in claiming the rebate. Not so, according to rigorous, scientific, marketing research.
They are going to be shocked if they ever find out about research from the University of Florida that shows consumers are actually more likely to turn in rebate claims when subjected to shorter deadlines. And, those companies’ executives might have strokes if they read further and learn that we turn in those rebate claims faster, and in greater numbers, when subjected to more difficult instructions.
Now, you might be thinking “If the science is right, then I don’t know if I want companies to change their ways. Maybe things will only get worse for us consumers.” But, would things get worse, if companies did what this research implies they should? Answer: yes and no. Let’s consider what would happen if companies used longer deadlines and simpler instructions for their mail-in rebates.
As a group, consumers would be less likely to turn in those rebate claims, according to the research. But, those few individuals who fought against instinct and behaved rationally, would benefit from easier instructions and looser deadlines. And, they’d have the University of Florida and Rebate Report Card to thank, for getting this information out.
Anyway, there’s not much reason to worry about companies changing their ways anytime soon. This research was done in 2003. If the company executives haven’t read it by now. I really don’t think they care.
The research cited above was conducted in 2003, by former UF marketing instructor Timothy Silk. You can read a summary of his research project at: http://news.ufl.edu/2004/06/15/rebates/
Please look at our “Mesage Board” for further updates on what’s going on with the site. I’m going to reserve this blog for things like deep thoughts on the state of the rebate business, or research into the psychology and marketing of rebates, etc.
In the “Mesage Board,” you will find a “Site News” category. That’s the place to look to see what’s up behind the scenes at RebateReportCard.com. While you’re there, post a message in one of the other categories. Get a conversation started and help build this website. Thanks for being here!
Today I sent out the first e-mail to announce the presence of this web site to a select group of people, so that they might help me test this thing. This first group is pretty elite. Basically just friends and family.
If all goes well, I’ll fix whatever bugs they help me find and we’ll get this thing launched to the general public in a week or so.
