Comment by Daedalus

12/13/2005 @ 10:21 am

Wow…good job keeping an open mind. I’ve seen cameras with a slower shutter speed. Best Buy held up their end of the bargain by sending you the rebate they were responsible for in a timely manner. The rebate being exclusive to Best Buy is not a matter of Best Buy saying “Get D-Link on the phone. I want them to sign a rebate deal with us and us alone!”. If you check D-Link’s website, you’ll see that they have rebates set up with all manner of retailers, they are simply subdivided up into different offers at different time periods as opposed to one blanket rebate available with purchase from any participating retailer. Personally, I prefer the latter as well because it gives you more flexibility in terms of where to go spend your money.

Out of curiosity, when you say “According to D-Link…” did you speak to an actual person, or simply use the online form to check rebate status? Those tend to only have 3 stages of display (Pending, Processing, and Complete), none of which are terribly informative. If you haven’t already, call and talk to a CSR. For all you know, your envelope got soaked in transit and the ink ran making the address illegible. Presumably, you made a photocopy of all the pertinent materials before you sent them in (as you should always do with any mail-in form) and will be able to resubmit if necessary. I’ve had success with that in the past.

The fact of the matter is that you should exercise judgment before diving right into a deal that has rebates associated with it. Whenever possible, go for the products with instant rebates or instant savings. Claiming false advertising is not only rash but inaccurate as well. I’d be willing to bet, without even having seen the item in question, that the pertinent advertisement had a picture and short text description of the item, with a big yellow price tag listing the final price in bold black, while beneath that price tag in smaller white lettering it listed out the $X retail price - $Y instant rebates - $Z mail-in rebates. You don’t get much more full disclosure than that which means that you knew exactly what you were getting yourself into before you even left your house.

You can find a pretty decent article about rebates here.

Comment by Dodongo

12/13/2005 @ 2:04 pm

Steve, your post is a Mad Lib.

Anytime you said “Best Buy” there might as well have been a blank with the words “Name of a Retail Store” underneath it because you will have the exact same experience at Circuit City, Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Omar’s Fish and Routers, etcetera, etcetera.

Comment by Denalan

12/13/2005 @ 5:37 pm

Tim, I disagree. Best Buy is notorious for having a large number of advertised rebates, and multiple rebates per item. They’ve made it a big pain in order to redeem these rebates, all in the name of making more money at the expense of the consumer. No other retailer is this bad.

And this is most certainly false advertising–the retailer clearly stated that the rebate would arrive in 8 weeks. It is not here, and now I wonder if I’ll receive it at all. This is either illegal, or it should be; this kind of nonsense should certainly be reported to the BBB.

And no, I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into before I left the house. I thought I’d get the rebate in 8 weeks. Instead I’ve been screwed.

Comment by DevilsAdvocate

12/13/2005 @ 5:54 pm

All good points gentlemen - but you’re going on the assumption that Best buy (and other retailers) AREN’T encouraging, marketing towards and relying heavily on (over 60% of their advertising in the last circular I got was rebate centric) consumers flocking to said rebates.

Every time a consumer trusts a company - a major retailer (in Best Buy) and a major manufacturer (in Dlink) no less - of adhering to responsible business practices they should not be subject to a din of “I told you so” or “thats what you get” when they get stuck on the short end of the stick.

Expecting a company to demand from their subcontractors (the nice men who drive the rebate business and thus drive $ to their respective pockets) the same good behavior they themselves tout is NOT being a communist….its simply trying to get rid of the plausible deniability that is intentionally built into the chain of responsibilty.

When comapnies like best buy tout their “deals” while working with fly by night rebaters (who close up doors and reopen under another name to serve the next rebate) - they’re knowingly profiting from bad faith actions. Obviously, if they get away with it I cant blame them…but the AG ought to crack the whip if they want to keep at least the air of fairness. Why do rebates work? For a lot of reasons, consumer apathy being one of them. But intentionally denying claims is not the same, just ask us people who clip and copy and wait patiently.

Comment by Dodongo

12/13/2005 @ 6:47 pm

I’ll say one more thing and then this will forver be the end of my butting heads with Denalan regarding all things Best Buy and/or Microsoft.

What the fuck does this have to do with playing video games?

Comment by Scrimpnut

12/13/2005 @ 8:33 pm

uh-oh, I have two Best Buy rebates I’ve sat on since Thanksgiving. They’re probably no good now.

Comment by Denalan

12/13/2005 @ 9:33 pm

I’ll say one more thing and then this will forver be the end of my butting heads with Denalan regarding all things Best Buy and/or Microsoft.

What the fuck does this have to do with playing video games?

Ok, regarding Microsoft (which this article does not have anything to do with, BTW)–if you recall a couple of my articles were about the Xbox and Xbox 360. One article even favored the Xbox as a way to play some recent video game titles…enough said.

This current article is also about video games. The article mentioned me buying a new router because my old one wasn’t working well with a couple of computer games. It’s about trying to get a decent price with rebates on electronics in order to play games.

The well-informed gamer won’t purchase games that suck, will purchase the best game accessories, won’t give into advertising hype, and will try not to get screwed over by retailers. Which allows for more time to play great games. And that’s what it’s all about.