And we all know it.  I’ve grown fed up with them.

Now granted I’ve had my share of decent mail in rebates.  The time there was a buy 1 get 3 free (via email rebate) on computer games, in which I almost collected the entire “Tycoon” series.  And there’s been the occasional $40 rebate that I completely forgot about and was pleasantly surprised when 3 full months later I received a random check in the mail.

But let’s face it, the complete point of mail-in rebates is to make it as difficult as possible for the consumer to actually receive it.  You have fill out a whole form, cut off the UPC, make a photocopy of it, include the receipt, and even sometimes you have to confirm online after you’ve already mailed everything in.  You then wait literally a full three months for a check (or product) to arrive.

And the thing that is the most despicable about it is that the store in which you purchased the initial product more than likely advertised the price of the product as if the rebate had already occurred.  So it’s complete consumer deception.  And I realize that pissing off one person versus deceiving 150 more is not enough for the companies to stop, but oh well, I’ll voice my opinion anyway.

The reason for this outburst is my most recent mail-in rebate experience.  I got a new phone through Verizon back in July that had a $50 rebate.  I have still not received that rebate, so I logged onto Verizon to find out what was the deal, only to discover that the check had been “returned” about two months ago (and of course, I was never notified).  So I called the 800 number on the page, waded through about 5 pages of menus, none of which were useful, so I eventually just hit 0 (which I should have just done immediately) and was taken to an actual human being.  Turned out the reason it was returned was because they had my address wrong in their system.  So she fixed that, and I’ll be receiving the rebate in 15 days (I’m assuming that’s business days, and I’m assuming that starts counting down in about a week).

Now do note that I’ve been receiving bills from Verizon no problem during this whole time.

Boo.