Mail-In Rebates

Mail in rebates, are they really good for the consumer? Through the holiday seasons we face heavy traffic, the only parking is way out in the middle of no where as we have to walk, and one and two hour waits in lines to check out.

We all shop for either ourselves or someone special and we all are guilty of trying to sift through items looking for the better bargain for our money. Everyone looks for a bargain not just one of us. Bargains however, are sometimes not what they seem. Most families live on a tight budget, especially those families of two or more children, they are the ones who feel the crunch during the holiday season.

We come to depend on sales and manufactures have come up with a way to save the consumer tons of money during the holiday seasons. They have come up with the idea of mail in rebates, rebates that would allow the shoestring budget to enjoy a more expensive gift. Rebates can mean the difference of wishing for something to actually being able to buy the same gift. This gives the consumer the opportunity to buy the item knowing that they will be getting more than half the price back in four to six weeks. What could be better than this?

A rebate generally works like this; we purchase the item, cut off the bar code and mail the receipt with the bar code back to the manufacturer and wait the alloted time for the rebate to come back to you in the mail. Sounds great and it also saves us a ton of money and everyone is happy.

More often than none that is it reported, the mail in rebates are not what they claim to be and we loose our money. Not only have we purchased an high end item way out of our means, we ended up paying full price and have something we otherwise would not have bought. There is no way of knowing exactly which companies are on the take and which ones honor their rebates, this hurts everyone. This is not a win win situation.

Mail in rebates are considered red tape to manufactures, paperwork than sounds simple turns out to be a mound of unwanted rebates. Some manufacturers work harder and spend more money at trying to figure out ways to rip off the consumer than going on and honoring their rebates. That is a bad thing to say, but it is true. We do our part and follow the directions in filling out for the rebates, but somehow we are always the ones who fail to leave something out and this is just what The manufacturer is hoping to see, when this happens, you are better off preparing yourself to the fact that you will not get your rebate back. This is a long time process to arguing over a rebate and the manufacturer usually is the ones who come out on top and have legally stolen your money.

When this starts, the best thing to so is give it up, we can't win. Cough it up to a lesson well learned and shy away from mail in rebates.