Thursday, March 23, 2006

REBATES!

Well, rebates just get better all the time. I purchased a Best Data video card at Fry's a few weeks ago. I also got a stick of RAM. The video card had a $30 rebate on it and the memory a $15. I wanted to make sure that everything worked before turning in the rebates, since once you cut all of the bar codes off you can no longer return anything. One has thirty days to return something, so I let the parts work for a couple of weeks to see that everything worked. I would've liked to have given them thirty days, but I figured the rebates would run out around that time, since all the ones I had done in the past had been that way.
I sat down and began going through all of the fine print only to find that the video card rebate had fifteen days from the date of purchase to get it in and the memory had 14. Fifteen was the day I was looking at it, so the memory rebate had expired. Had the memory not had the rebate I would not have purchased it, since it was not worth fifteen dollars more to me. Because of this unreasonable time frame I have now paid $15 more than I wanted to.
I can not stress enough how much I hate the rebate game. I have seen others argue that it would cost us all more if they couldn't bank on some people not cashing in the rebate. To that I say so what. Charge me the price that you need to sell the item for. If it is not worth that price to me I won't buy it. This is just one more way that businesses treat there customers like an adversary or compeditor. It is not about creating a good product that everyone wants. It is about tricking people into buying your product.