Screwed by Canon Rebate

[Buck Turgidson]

Reading this thread raised my blood pressure. I have always suspected rebates were a scam, and our Federa agencies don't seem to have much interest in protecting us.

Not to start a political discussion, but why is our goverment for business and not the people?

If cloned beef and milk is not harmful, then why NOT label it as such and let us decide if we want to eat it?

This is the time of year that credit card companies send us privacy notifications and give us the opportunity to opt out. I can do just about anything I want on-line with my Citibank credit card, increase my limit, add a second authorized user, etc. Opt out of their privacy policy? No, I have to mail a form at my expense to some freaking PO Box in Des Moines and wait

30 days for it to take effect. I guess something like this is too hard to program on a website. What a crock. Why was is it opt-out instead of opt-in? Of course the answer is obvious.

Sorry for the rant. Time for my medication.

[Cheri]

Perhaps you could email Canon, and give them a link to these newsgroups. That would probably solve your problem PDQ.

Cheri

[Squirrel]

Staples "EZ rebates" are top notch. I fill out the form online and can follow the procedure all the way through. I've also had great experiences with Circuit City rebates - never had one disappear.

[David Starr]

A few years ago, I sent in a rebate form on a hard drive. It came back "no such address". So, I copied the form, cut out the address & taped it to the envelope. It came back for the same reason.

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[Cheri]

You're speaking to my heart there. What a crock of crap. Citibank pulled that on me with some new card recently. I have had my old card for twenty years, and have some things automatically coming out every month, accidental insurance etc. Then these thugs send me a new card called a World Charter Card with a completely different number, and when I called to complain, I got a snotty rep who told me that if I didn't want the new card I should have opted out, and then she asked me if I read my mail. I told her why does one have to opt out if they don't want something, if they do want it they should opt in. Anyway, I had to spend quite a bit of time getting the automatic payments switched, and I am not a happy camper.

Cheri

[Bill]

Squirrel

Circuit City may not lose rebates but they do reject them. They have this new thing going on with "minimum purchase price" for items, which they conveniently leave off of many forms, but still reject the rebate if you paid less than the minimum price their computer has for that rebate. So if you did a price match or used a large Circuit City coupon, they will reject the rebate using bogus excuses like it cannot be combined with other offers (which they interpret the rebate/price match to be). Only problem with that is that it CAN be combined with these if the price you paid is above that minimum price (which is NOT the normal selling price), so that means that those terms do NOT apply to coupons and price matches.

Some attorney is going to come along (hopefully) and file a class-action suit against them on this.

Bill

[anon]

Circuit City has already been sued TWICE by New Jersey's AG for failing to honor rebates. That's unreal... nowadays you have to screw a lot of people before any watchdog agency will take action, so to have gotten sued again. wow!

we need much greater penalties. If the companies keep engaging in the same old practices, it's evidence the penalties aren't effective... i'd love to see it something along the lines of "whatever your last one or two quarters' net income was, you pay us that much in cash." You talk about walking the straight & narrow.

[Cheri]

You're absolutely right about that.

Cheri

[Bill]

Can you post details? Was it recent? With this "minimum price" BS, they were rejecting stuff back in September-October, but they never had any wording on their rebate forms regarding the minimum price. All of a sudden, people reported invalid rebates had been validated (this after calling and having the rebate house refuse to validate them, and their rebate house will almost always validate rejected rebates by calling) and the minimum pricing wording started showing up on forms. I figured someone must have gotten to them because they would not do stuff like this on their own. Then on Black Friday, they got sloppy and did not include the wording on most of the forms, only to add it to the online versions a couple of weeks later and reject rebates that did not meet that amount.

I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to rebate shenanigans, but CC really deserves to be hauled to court over this stuff.

Bill

[Scott en Aztlán]

"anon" said in misc.consumers:

No, we as consumers need to WISE UP and stop participating in this scam. The reason rebates exist is because people continue to pay more up front for products with a rebate even though they KNOW that the company offering the rebate is going to do everything in their power to make sure that the consumer cannot collect.

As long as you suckers keep falling for it, these companies are going to continue to jerk you around. And don't hold your breath waiting for the government to help you...

[Squirrel]

Interesting! I must admit, I've never walked in with boatloads of coupons to bring the price way down, although I believe I've pricematched before and still received the rebate. I must have not reached the price point put into their system for rejection. I guess Staples is the only (?) "good guy" out there.

Thanks for the info on CC.

[David Combs]

Well, just who do you think OWNS "our" politicians? Those who contribute the most money. Ie, the corporations and their CEO's.

It's like 100% for the Republicans, it appears, at least to me.

Somewhat less for the Dems.

And now, with the (extreme?) right-wing in (executive) power, ie in control of Justice, the FDA, etc, etc, we've had 6 (7) years of constant nulling-out of consumer and citizen protection (from business).

Look, if you were Swift or some other meat-packer, would YOU want labels on your product that said "cloned meat product", nicely giving the shopper all the info he/she needs to make a rational choice?

HELL NO you wouldn't!

Because with such labeling, people would surely by LESS of your product, and so sales and then profits would be down, and then your stock-price -- and soon the Board would can you get someone else to pay $20 million a year to.

So, you instead do *everything possible* to keep that labeling from being required by law.

Oh, the naive will say, that CEO wouldn't really oppose that law, because doing so would harm the consumer, and no CEO would do that!

Right, like the cigarette people swearing under oath that cigarettes didn't cause cancer.

Like willingly continuing to sell expensive pills that just happen to the side-effect of killing people.

[David Combs]

Aeons ago (late 50's), my mother and father were on a trip, so I wrote a letter to:

Hotel de something Rue do something-else

They got it. Scribbled on the envelope was "try Paris"!

David

[plonker]

Just more offtopic useless crap......

• PLONK *

[Steve B]

"measekite" wrote

Sounds like insurance companies to me. Car and home warranty companies, too.

Enticement, enticement, enticement, and once they got you, no cheese.

Steve