Mail In Rebates

Mail in Rebates is probably one of the cleverest innovations by the retailers / manufacturers to improve sales. I guess this concept was developed based on the theory most people are fail to mail in the rebate.

There are various points of failure that I can see

1.Most people lose the receipt after buying. Some stores are courteous enough to give a duplicate receipt but most don’t.

2.Almost all mail in rebates need the product upc mailed along with the rebate. There has been at least one instance where I have thrown the box away after I opened it.

3.Only one per address. If you are greedy and buy two and send in mail in rebate for 2 you will actually get money only for one. So always read the fine print.

4.We have to mail it by certain date. Usually the date seems very far away that we postpone it and forget it.

5.Some times you can miss out a minute detail while filling the form and it can get rejected.

So if you are not careful, diligent and do not really pay attention to details, mail in rebate is not a good option for you.

But I do accept it is a win for the customer because of those really low prices you pay.