THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 22, 1994 TAG: 9410210001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Rebates, large and small, beckon customers all over the place these days.
Tempted, suspicious purchasers may wonder how smart it is to go for some of these advertised bonuses. But even the smallest rebate is hard to pass up (pennies saved are pennies earned, remember) when the offer comes attached to a product you are buying anyhow. The item may already be in the shopping cart when you first notice the invitation to send in this or that evidence and get a nice refund.
That was just about the way it was recently when I read the promotional material on a non-prescription product I had just plucked from a shelf in a local store. It seems that I could get a rebate of almost a third of what I'd paid by mailing in some purchase proof.
All I had to do was fill out a little form with name, address, etc., attach a sales slip to show the store, date of sale and price paid, plus the part of the outer package that had the bar code on it. Not too much effort or expense, at first blush. It seemed worth a stamp and an envelope to get a dollar back.
However, I did take a little extra trouble. Because I wanted to keep my own record of this particular purchase as well as of other items I had charged to a credit card on the same sales slip, I made a hot copy. And I sent this in with the rebate forms, keeping the original for myself.
Wrong move.
In a week or so, back came my little pieces of documentation, along with a note from the company. It seems that a copy of the sales ticket violated the rules; I should have sent the original. However, all might not be lost. I would be allowed to resubmit the rebate request, with the correct proofs, if I did so very quickly.
At that point, I performed a little arithmetic. If I resubmitted the rebate claim, I would have spent two 29-cent stamps, all told. Add this to the hot-copying charge I had already incurred, plus a few cents for envelopes, and I would have invested about 70 cents to get back a dollar. That would be a net rebate of about 30 cents, without even counting the value of the personal time and effort expended.
So if I looked at it one way, most of the promised rebate would vanish into thin air if I kept on.
On the other hand, I reasoned, perhaps I should keep on so that at least I recouped my ballooning investment.
My fiscally frazzled brain froze. I didn't keep on. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB