So many times we have gone into stores and when we were about to buy something and I said to my wife, I think that I remember seeing a rebate offer or coupon for this product about a week ago, etc.
WHY NOT -- Real-time Rebate Information and Clearing House:
1. Consumer walks into a retail store and decides that he/she wants to buy a digital camera. 2. Consumer calls 1-800-GET-REBATE from the cell phone to find out if the manufacturer is offering a rebate. 3. The operator tells consumer that yes there is $20 rebate on the product or $40 available from a competitor is available as well. 4. The rebate information is send directly to consumer's cell phone. 5. Consumer takes the product to the sales register where they enter the rebate code and consumer instantaneously gets the rebate.
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This would be a big improvement over status quo. Consider current case with Apple: buy laptop, ipod, and printer and get $300 back. But deal requires sending them upc codes, sales receipts, ... This might be (half) understandable if I bought the products at some random retailer, but I bought them all from Apple itself online at their store. Hence they already know I did what was required. Still they make me jump through these hoops.
This problem is exactly why I'm willing to pay a few dollars more to purchase at Best Buy or Circuit City for many products (most of my new home's appliances were from them). They print out a sales receipt, a rebate form with the requirements, and a copy of the sales receipt to be sent with the form. After years of losing a rebate because of some minor problem, I have not had ONE miss when using their systems. It works great and I would like to see more places work it this way.
The reason "real time rebates" do not work is that companies don't want these to be in place. They want the 6 to 8 week float on the rebate dollars. Also, they are betting many people may not actually apply for the rebate. For some great rebate listings and generally great deals, at least for tech gear, go to www.techbargains.com
If rebates were real time then they would be really small. The whole point is that most people never collect. Its great if you want to follow through, because you make money off all the people forget, and if you don't you have only yourself to blame.
this is called a "sale". and everyone gets the reduced price at the expense of the store (and since the actual price is reduced, the sales tax revenue is also reduced). Rebates are at the expense of the manufacturer, so the store likes them (they get their full profit margin), the state likes them (they get their full tax amount), and the manufacturers like them because they get the "float" on your money for 6-8 weeks and a large percentage of people don't bother or forget to mail them in. CompUSA has also started printing the rebate form with an extra copy of the receipt so all I have to do is cut the UPC code from the box and fill in my name and address and wait (and wait) for my money to come back to me. My favorites are the ones that are free (after rebate). It only costs me the sales tax and a stamp for the item. Great for CDR's and slim jewel cases. I don't think I have ever "paid" for these.