Bob's wife is my hero...

I avoid rebates and look for good sales just because of this kind of crap!

We buy a lot of stuff with rebates. Rebates good. Lowering the price to the after-rebate cost would be better, but they're smart, how many people throw the box away, along with the bar code, or lose the receipt, either case the company wins cause snowballs in hell have a helluva lot better chance than you do.

Sometimes they 'test' you, and don't send the rebate. How many people forget they sent it in and again company 1, you nada.

Then you get the other side. We bought a HP printer with two rebates. One came through fine, the other, after the 8 weeks that they all picked as the best amount of time to make sure you don't remember what's going on, sent us a postcard saying we weren't getting it because we didn't buy it from an "approved" company.

Now this is like waving a red flag at a bull to my wife. She calls the rebate handler, New Age something or another, based right here in good old Arizona. They said "saary, you read the card, invalid company, no rebate for you. My wife asked what the 'approved' companies were, they said ...uhh.... ummm....

She asked where it was posted what companies you could buy from.... uhhhh... ummm...

She (as always prepared) had a copy of the form, the barcode, and the receipt, asked where on the rebate form it said what company was 'legal'

Ummm..uhhhh...

Asked to speak to a supervisor, since their person seemed to have an IQ deficiency, gave her a name and extension...

"I'm sorry, this person's not available, please leave a message"... so she did, with only the detail that my wife always has ready somehow (thank God, I can on a good day tell you where I was born, God supplies idiots like me with spouses with minds like a file cabinet, and file cabinets like an accountant's dream)

two days, two more calls, same story, but nobody calls back.

I do my job at this point, which is call, rant, rave, call them idiots, and by God I want a call before I hang up!!

She gets a call the next day from the woman, which pisses my wife off to no end, since she wasn't important enough to get a callback. The woman says "invalid company, bla bla bla, but because we don't want you mad, we'll send you a ream of paper" Lessee, rebate is 50 bucks, must be gold paper. Wife says 50 bucks, no paper, 50 bucks, thassit, you don't even know what the hell a valid company is!" Being reasonable -cough- and in the name of customer satisfaction --cough-- the woman agrees. In 8 weeks you'll have 50 US treasury kinda bucks.

8 weeks later, we get a card, same as the first, wrong company, no rebate for you. Wife ROYALLY pissed, calls the same woman for -three- days, no answer. I call, bla bla bla incompetant SOBS bla bla bla, and get a call the next day. Wife would give up the 50 bucks to see the whole damn company in handcuffs at this point, The woman says I don't know WHY they refused, she had it cleared to pay,she'll find out what's going on and call me back tomorrow.

Next day, no call, and my wife nods knowingly and gets ready to have Ashcroft (remember him?) and the supreme court go after this "company". I get a call at 9:00 THAT NIGHT cause the woman said she'd call. Wife isn't amused at her concienciousness(sp?). Woman says New Age Themselves will cut a check cause we've waited long enough. No 8 weeks for us, 7-10 days, by God!! That was about 1/15

Today we started the next round of calls to our favorite person at New Age, since 2/9 minus 1/15 seems like a wee bit more than 10 days. Called same woman, got same voice mail, this woman is one busy woman I guess, by God. Wife has other thoughts on her...

I see some calls to HP, the attorney General, and the BBB and anyone else that we can find on the net coming. Rebates can be a good thing, with the right company. With the wrong one, it's a guarantee that we'll never buy from anyone that uses this place to do rebates again. HP? Sarry, you have good product, but bad taste in who you deal with

[I just don't get it]