We're pricing up for various household appliances and lots of them have "mail-in rebates". Why? How come they just don't discount the price at the till? And are the rebates reliable?

I don't think I've seen (m)any of these in Britain, bit confused as to the point.

Biiiiink

To get your name and address to send marketing information to.

Junk Mail senders need all the help they can get.

The answers could also lie here.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6l53f/c...nrebatejunkie/

as said up top to get your address for the junk mailers..

and that they have a less than 50% redemption rate...

Not reliable, when we buy something we ignore the rebate when we buy but we still send it off in case the cheque comes.

Did 4 in the last year and only got 1 back.

Not reliable and often in US dollars. It usually costs more to cash the US dolllar coupon than it's worth.

Yikes :scared: I'll steer clear. Thanks all!

They are a scam and should be outlawed.

Couldn't agree more with the last most there. We bought something from an online retailer, and the mail in rebate was $50. We had to cut the UPC on the packet, go online and print out a form, and mail it in to them.

It has been 6 weeks now, and we are still waiting for the cheque to arrive. The only news we've had from them, is a confirmation email sent to us. We won't be doing that again, instead we will be looking for instant rebates.

In this day and age of electronic transfers, why is it still taking so long?

WOW, some comments here are a bit different from what I've experienced. Mail-in rebates for items purchased from large and well-known retailers are very raliable - I've sent many of them in and always got my money - whether it'd be $5 or $50! It would be plain illegal for them not to send you the money. So they do! (but it takes 6-10 weeks, rarely sooner than that). Many retailers offering mail-in rebates also have 1-800 numbers which track the status of your rebate. Hope this helps.

I agree that waiting for 10 weeks ain't fun, but if you had a choice of getting something for $250 or $200 ($50 back in the mail), which one would you choose?

It's not up to us how they set up their rebates. I'm sure it's an American invention and we just have to put up with this crap. But they always stick to their terms, so I can't say it's a theft or somthing like that. I always got my money back.

They are a scam in principle. The idea, obviously, is that not everyone will mail in the rebate.

Fine you say, the ones that do get the rebate. Except they use that rebate to post an advertised price for a product that is below what you have to pay for it. Often there are many terms and conditions attached to these rebates, so that many buyers will not qualify, yet they still advertise the price assuming the rebate will be granted, which is far from certain.

In the UK, we call this false advertising. And if you do a Google search, you'll see that a lot of Canadian lawmakers think it is too.

A number of retailers are moving away from them, knowing how much they annoy customers (Bestbuy and Staples, for example, are phasing them out of their stores).

As an analogy, in the US it is now illegal to advertise cars as being $x a month when that is subject to financing approval. They must now say something like "this car may be $x a month if you put down $y and qualify for our financing at z%, which not everyone will." In other words, they have to made the small print part of the big print. I think the same should be true of rebates.

You can tell, I don't like them!

We purchased a new computer and printer at Christmas time and they both had mail in rebates with them.

We went through the process, and it was a pain, copy this form, take this serial number down, mail in by a certain date. After 2 months, my husband called the 1-800 number and was told that they had either not received the paperwork or we were out of the prescribed time line for submission. We are talking $180, not a lot of money by UK standards, but as a point of principle, we were not having it.

We got on to the store were we bought the goods, (future shop) and their customer services people at head office took over and we received both the rebates within a few weeks.

ramac's post has reminded me that I was going to bring up the subject of complaining about bad service.

Complaining about poor service may be a delicate subject for the English but it's normal here and gets results. On several occasions when we were setting up home, furniture stores failed to deliver when promised. It wasn't generally their fault but that of their suppliers. Nevertheless, complaining to the stores typically resulted in significant refunds, as well as loans of furniture to tide us over.

I guess I have grown up with the idea of mail-in rebates so I am used to it. I have never had one not pay off, but it can take what seems forever to finally come. I don't mind the junk email they may generate as I have a recycle box to drop them in. :-) My husband usually fills them out as he likes that kind of thing. I have two sitting here in front of me to send off now for $16 each on memory cards for my digital camera.