{"id":523,"date":"2004-12-18T12:36:52","date_gmt":"2004-12-18T16:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/12\/18\/retailers-suck\/"},"modified":"2004-12-18T12:36:52","modified_gmt":"2004-12-18T16:36:52","slug":"retailers-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/12\/18\/retailers-suck\/","title":{"rendered":"Retailers Suck"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I hate mail-in rebates. I bought a computer at Best Buy last week with a tickets price of around $769. But look closely and there’s a tiny little number above it with a price of $1,069. THAT’s what you pay at the counter. Then they print out all of these rebate forms and it’s up to you, the consumer, to submit them.<\/P>
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So, I spent an hour yesterday compiling the necessary rebate information. There were four rebates totalling $300. One went to Best Buy, three went to Hewlett-Packard. What complicated things was that I had to complete each form individually and mail them in separate envelopes. I had to cut the UPC codes off the printer, PC and monitor boxes. I had to photocopy the receipts, rebate forms and UPC codes. Then, I had to sort them all out. This place wanted a copy of the receipt, the original rebate form and the copies of all three UPC codes. Another one wanted a copy of the receipt, the original rebate form and the original printer UPC code. At the end of the compiling efforts I realized that all of the Hewlett Packard rebates wanted original UPC codes…yet there was only one original UPC code available for each product.<\/P>
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I called the HP Rebate Center to explain my dilemma. She said to submit the forms and reciepts with copies of the UPC codes. She said they’d then reject them when they arrive there. They’ll send me a letter refusing my rebate, but will include another form to fill out explaining why I had no original UPC codes. Then I resubmit that form with additional information and then they’ll send me a rebate check.<\/P>
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…in 8 weeks (TWO MONTHS)!!!!<\/P>
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Now, maybe I”m being simplistic here…but couldn’t they just charge $300 less for the product? I mean, how much money are they spending on postage, people to man the phones, office space, etc…? I’m sure their assumption is that the daunting task of preparing the rebate will prevent some consumers from submitting them in the first place. But come on – there must be an easier way to handle this. <\/P>
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Merry Freakin’ Christmas.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate mail-in rebates. I bought a computer at Best Buy last week with a tickets price of around $769. But look closely and there’s a tiny little number above it with a price of $1,069. THAT’s what you pay at the counter. Then they print out all of these rebate forms and it’s up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}