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.
Innovative Techniques Make It Easy to Rate the Rebates
Let’s face it. This web site is about a potentially nerve-wracking subject — mail-in rebates (and sometimes other forms of rebates). Given the stressful nature of the website’s main topic, we’re doing all we can to make the site itself as simple and easy to use as possible.
We focus on simplicity and usability in everything on the site, from the way you find rebate ratings to the way you enter them to the way you dig up news about rebate providers.
If you look closely at the way you enter rebate ratings, right away you’ll see an example of an innovative technique that makes everything go more smoothly. The first thing you have to do is enter the name of the company that offered the rebate that you’re rating (or “grading”).
Now, on some web sites, you’d expect to see a long, long, long list of every company known to mankind. You’d have to scroll through a couple hundred company names in the hope that the one you wanted was in there. Would it be spelled the way you expected? Would it be “HP/Compaq” (Hewlett-Packard and Compaq have merged) or just “Compaq?” What if it were not there? It could become as much of a hassle as the rebate itself. And that would be a nightmare.
But, on Rebate Report Card, you just type in whatever name you want, however you want. We’re hoping you’ll keep it simple and spell it right. But, if you don’t, so be it. It’s your report. You do it however you want. We’ll figure out the details.
If you’re one of those skeptical types, you might be asking “what if we all type ‘HP’ in different ways?” Aha! That’s where the real genius comes in. Rebate Report Card has some unique, innovative logic at work behind the scenes to help smooth out the rough edges. The logic in our programming code will attempt to figure out what you mean.
So, by the time you go and look at what you posted, the exact company name you see might be a little different than the way you typed it in. That way, two or three different people can type the company name in different ways, but all their entries will show one company name — and the summary of all those reports will be easy to read and understand. Plus, when we add up the ratings (or grades) for HP, we can include all the “Hewlett-Packard” entries and the “Compaq” entries and the “HP” entries, etc., in one big total. Pretty cool, don’t you think?
How do we do all this? Well… We can’t reveal all our tricks. This sort of innovation takes valuable skill and knowledge. Maybe after it’s thoroughly tested and perfected we’ll sell the rights to Bill Gates or Google or Yahoo! (We’ll keep you posted on any offers.)
It’s all new innovation, and it might take a little while to get the logic working just the way we want, but we think it’ll go a long way toward ensuring that sharing your knowledge with the world and helping other consumers is an easy and rewarding experience. And that’s what this web site is all about.
You’ll see something called “News Feeds,” if you look over there at the menus running down the left side of most of the pages on this web site (hopefully including the page you’re looking at right now).
The editor and publisher of Rebate Report Card (RRC) has been rounding up, and creating from scratch, some informative news feeds to incorporate into this web site. So, if you click on that link over there (not right now, or you won’t get to the end of this sentence), you’ll see constantly updated news about efforts to reform the rebate business, problems with rebates, how to find good rebates, companies that are dropping rebates altogether, and whatnot.
Basically, if you are hankering for news about anything rebate-related — perhaps because you’re still steaming over how much of a hassle rebates have become and you want to know what’s being done about it — now you know where to look.
Even before the official launch of the site, you can voice your opinion on various problems with mail-in rebates. Just go to this web site’s home page and look at the right side of the page. You’ll usually see one or two polls there where you can enter your opinion. Or, you can just click the “Results” link to see what others have said.
After the main features have been added to this web site, you’ll find a much more powerful and influential way to let your voice be heard. But, we’ll save the details about that for later.
