I bought an HD-TV last night–my first. I was excited because it was pretty inexpensive: it was only $599 and looked terrific.
I brought the tag from the TV to the front of the store to check it out. The salesperson looked at the tag.
Then, you guys had to be asses about it.
“Okay, that will be $799 now, but you get a $50 instant rebate and a $150 mail-in rebate.”
“Why not just give the rebates to me now?”
“The mail in rebate has a short survey attached.”
“What about the instant rebate?”
“Oh, you do get that back now.”
“Then why count it as a rebate? It’s just money off of the TV.”
“No, it’s an instant rebate.”
“But I don’t pay for it before I get it back, right?”
“Right.”
“Then it’s not a rebate.”
“No, it’s an instant rebate.”
This went on for several hours. It’s hard to explain to a cashier that I’m not paying any money that I’m not being charged, but hey, you can’t expect everyone to comprehend extremely basic concepts of exchange.
Look, Best Buy, I’m really starting to get tired of rebates, mainly because I’m both lazy and cheap: I’m cheap enough that I want the money back, even if it’s not that much, but I’m lazy enough that I won’t actually mail in the rebate. Thus, I end up buying products based on a theoretical rebate that I know deep down I’ll never actually get.
Of course, we’re all smart enough to know the truth; rebates are put in by companies that want to screw us out of money, namely those evil yellow bastards at Best Buy. But we’re also dumb enough to think that we’re above the system, that somehow, we’ll figure it out.
Then you get home, and the receipt sits for a while.
Eventually, you get around to mailing the rebate request. Except that you can’t, because you don’t have three UPCs, and you have no idea where your birth certificate is. They structure the rules to get you; they cannot be beaten. They sit in their board rooms and laugh at my crappy purchasing habits.
Yet the next time I’m at the store, I’ll still be buying things with rebates, because I still think that somehow, I’m above it all. I’m better. This time, I can win.
I can’t.
I single out Best Buy because they’re the biggest snakes in the grass; I already have a problem with any store that tries to sell you warranties for products that already have warranties (“our warranty covers you in case it really sucks”), but they really seem to build rebates into everything.
And, of course, I keep buying stuff there. Because this time, I’ll win.
