Rebate irritations

[johnridley]

In the past I really haven't had any trouble with rebates. I don't think I've ever been denied one, I'm very careful about following the rules, and I check the rules BEFORE buying.

But now they have a new scam going. Instead of getting a check, you get a prepaid Visa card. This is a good deal for them because they keep the money until you actually spend it, and even then, I bet they get a percent or so kickback from the clearinghouse.

But the big problem is, it's difficult to spend. I buy almost everything online; I don't think I've paid for anything at a store for a couple of months now. Paypal won't let you transfer money into your account from a credit card, and online vendors don't have any way to say "pull $10 from this card, $10 from that, and the rest from this other."

I guess I could go put money into my micropay account at Baen Books, but I've still got a few bucks in there and I've bought books to last me another few months at least (probably more, given the overtime that I'm working these days).

I did spend $4.99 over at Tom Smith's site for the Windycon MP3s, but that's it. And now I have a card with $5.01 on it.

I've got 3 of these cards now, from various components used to build my new machine back in October. I think these cards are going to go into J's wallet to use on groceries or something. 'Course, I'm not sure how to do the "10 here, 10 there" thing with self-check-out. I know a proper checkout line can handle it. The assistant on the self-check lines could probably do it too.

Comments

[sraun]

From the way I know they work from my employer's point of view, I'd bet the firms offering the rebate get a discount from the Visa vendor. And then the Visa vendor gets to invest the money.

Either way, I understand your pain. I have a similar solution - we turn them into pocket money, and use them for eating out, buying groceries, etc.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't do any of those things (eating out, buying groceries, or etc'ing (or at least, I stick to free etc'ing)). I need to just give them to Jenn who runs the house, should have done that to start with. Usually when I got checks from rebates, I'd put them in my wallet and deposit them the next time I got near the ATM, and I just put these cards in my wallet out of habit.

[c0nsumer.livejournal.com]

Sign up for a Google Checkout account and use it to buy "stuff" from yourself?

You'll still have to pay a fee, but it's less than PayPal and works pretty flawlessly.

I was once rejected from an $800 rebate from Canon, completely incorrectly. It took a bit, but once I dug up a number for the rebate company (those are sure easy to find) and dug through their phone tree I managed to get someone on the phone who was immediately able to look through my scanned documents to see that they'd made a mistake, approve the rebate, tell me when the check would be issued.

[bwittig.livejournal.com]

Don't you have a college student who could use some spending money?

I bet the local pizza place could solve the problem fairly quick!

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Converting this into pizzas sounds as good as anything.

[jennlk]

'Course, I'm not sure how to do the "10 here, 10 there" thing with self-check-out.

"gift/return card", "gift/return card", debit card for the balance.

(bwittig -- she's coming home Wednesday, and not much into college pizza anyway. Subway, otoh....)