mrschwarz said:Personally, I like rebates. I always send them in and always get reimbursed. If you follow the instructions to the letter, you'll get your rebate.
The reason I like them is that many do not send in for them. This means that rebates usually offer more dollars off than a sale price would for those of us who do send in for them.
As for the cost of the money, let's take a $30 rebate for example. If you have a 6% interest rate and it takes 2 months to get the rebate, you will have lost $0.30 on the transaction ($30 x 0.5% x 2). Seems like a fair exchange to me.
If everyone responded to rebates, they would most likely go away. It costs the store more to process a rebate than it would just to discount the merchandise.
On a per person basis yes its nothing. But add in what the credit card compaines make during that 2 months also and then multiply both by a few millon consumers and the numbers get large. Its a scam, skimming a little bit from every consumer that files a rebate.