...Mail In Rebates?

For a Tech-Bargain hunter like me, rebates are an awesome way to get stuff at prices lower than the usual market value. Prices get reduced by $10 to even more than $200 in rebates.

Rebates are a great way to save a pretty penny, but at times it’s just a pain in the butt. The best type of rebate is the instant one. The one that lops off a price just by adding a coupon code. That’s pretty much like a store discount so to speak. The traditional rebate is quite the opposite. The wait time can be pretty ridiculous.

Manufacturers offer rebates for items mainly because they cant sell them anymore. As for all technologically related items, they do depreciate with time. As a result, it would be a crime and suicide at the same time for a company to maintain the MRSP after a while. So that’s where rebates come in.

The way that a rebate works is that you buy the item at full price, then you fill up a form which you mail to the manufacturer together with proof of purchase. The application is processed then after a considerable amount of time, you get a check in the mail.

Personally I feel that this rebate thingy is kind of scam. Why go through all the trouble of filling up the form, mailing it and waiting? That’s exactly how the manufacturers want you to feel. They want you to pay full price for the item, and then hopefully forget about filling in the rebate because of the hassle. Would you go through all that trouble just to get $10 back?

Then there’s the other factor like losing the rebate in the mail. Companies can easily claim that the rebate was never received due to the postal service. What can be done then? You’re not going to fork out extra cash for postage with a tracking number are you? With that risk alone, people do tend to shy away from indulging in items with rebates involved.

There are some companies who are really good with rebates though. I’ve had a very positive experience with T-Mobile, and apparently Nikon’s a good boy too. My encounter with Sandisk and Maxtor paint a very different picture. By the time I got my rebates from them, I had already forgotten that I actually was expecting one from them. Yes, that long.

So in the end, instead of guaranteeing that they’ll lose money through instant discounts at the stores, manufacturers introduced the idea of mail-in-rebates (MIR). It’s pretty clever of them don’t you think?