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Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)
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  1. #1
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    Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    So...
    I bought an Asus branded NVidia card through Newegg, that I would have bought anyway. It's a low end card, about $40, and had a $10.00 rebate.

    To get the rebate, one has to select it, with a poor search function, from over 100 items, and do various and sundry things, including cutting the barcode off the box and taping, not stapling, it to the form. I get it. The whole idea of these rebates is to make it annoying enough so that people don't ask for them. Then, to add a bit of insult, they offer (remember, this is ten dollars that we're discussing) quicker turn around if you pay some money, I've forgotten how much, maybe $2.00, maybe even $5.00.

    So, after going through all this, several weeks later, I get an email that my rebate is turned down. This may have been partially my fault. Newegg, despite its annoying pause (frequently hanging, sometimes resulting in double billing, from what I've seen on the Internet), thing where your card is verified, used my shipping address as my billing address. When I filled out the rebate, I don't remember if there were any warnings, but I put in the actual billing address which is my home address. Whether or not the rebate said MUST MATCH what is on invoice, or whether I even thought about that part, I don't remember. So, it may have been my error, and seeing how difficult they were making it, I should have realized it.

    At any rate, they say, however, through the vendor, you can do it again They then give a link, say you should click on rebate status and reprint and resubmit. However, the original form gives no place to fix the address, and, in addition, says that one must attach the bar code from the package, which of course, I don't have.

    So, tomorrow, I may call them and see if they can walk me through another way to get it--at this point, it's already cost me more than $10.00 in time. But, my thought, and this is where I wonder if I'm wrong---I've decided, due to this, to buy no more Asus products. I've bought their monitors, netbooks, and ultrabooks--all in all, spent well over $1,000 on Asus products. However, this $10.00 they've gained has lost me as a customer. So, if they were Apple, which has its locked in fan base, or a US phone or cable company, where there is no real competition, it doesn't matter to them if I like it or not.

    However, Asus is in competition. I thought the old adage is that it's easier to keep a customer than get a new one. Isn't this a rather foolish business decision on their part, to aggravate someone who can, by word of mouth, help their product or hurt it? In addition, I'm in a senior enough position so that if I say don't buy Asus, it will be considered. As I'm old, I probably won't buy that much more, but I would say this $10 has probably cost them at least a few hundred when I next look for monitors or laptops or my company does the same, even if it was my fault--at least partially. I do wonder, if I'd put the billing address to match the invoice, if I would have gotten the same notice, saying this does not match the billing address on the credit card.

    Anyway, nice move Asus. You did save $10.00. But the attitude is perhaps what bothers me most--I understand that companies look for an edge, and I'm not even sure any of them care about their customers anymore unless they're a smaller business, but this one just seems a bit sleezy, and there is plenty of competition for the products.
    Last edited by smr54; 8th January 2017 at 03:27 PM. Reason: typos

  2. #2
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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    I don't know that ASUS is unique in this. I find the process used by many companies now treats rebates as a cost control process that needs to be protected from nefarious customers that are somehow trying to bleed them dry. They are just looking for that rebate adjusted price on the advertising

    Did you try feedback on the Newegg website? That usually generates a defensive response from the marketing group.
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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    To paraphrase, I couldn't pay myself $10 to walk into a post office and mail in for that rebate. So you should blame yourself. ie., unless it's already a good price, leave it on the shelf. Unless you can make it a, "wtf, this is going to cost you x3 my rebate before I'm done." But, tbh , they really don't give a **** and you know it.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    QCTM (Quietly chuckling to myself) at the accuracy of both these responses. Yes, I have posted a review on Newegg, but it hasn't gone up yet. And yes, the rebate really had nothing to do with my original purchase and I would have bought it anyway--NVidia card, 2 GB RAM, $42.00 or so.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    "The best revenge is to live well", is a maxim that comes to mind.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    I would not blame ASUS, As they say in French, Il est entre deux chaises. (Its between two chairs).

    Another way to handle things is for Newegg to point to ASUS and vice versa.

    Do not buy products where you are to send in mail-in rebaits. Rebaits are baits
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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    Well, of course rebates are baits--that wasn't what annoyed me. Even the aggravation of what one has to do to fill out the form was expected. What annoyed me was after taking that trouble they turned me down.

    HOWEVER--I will hand it to them. I called their rebate center this morning and after confirming various information. they adjusted it and my rebate has been approved. So, now I'll hand it to ASUS, they haven't lost a customer. Which is good as their monitors and laptops are frequently quite competitive.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    OK, there's a lesson here for you to learn: don't buy through Newegg; go directly to the OEM.
    Registered Linux user #470359 and permanently recovered BOFH.

    Any advice in this post is worth exactly what you paid for it.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    For me, life's too short to mess with mail-in rebates. I purchased a few items with mail-in rebates, and pretty much every one left me with a "bad taste". I never had one declined, though

    Anyway, now I simply refuse to purchase items offered with mail-in rebates. I smile more often.
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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    Ugh, rebates. I'd rather they just reduce the price in the first place.
    OS': Fedora 25 - Arch Linux

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    Quote Originally Posted by ElderSnake
    Ugh, rebates. I'd rather they just reduce the price in the first place.
    agreed, which is why I wait a generation or two before buying and let the enthusiasts pick up the costs instead. also, there's the issue of where in the hardware range you actually need to buy from for the purposes you really need as opposed to what would be the ultimate specification for all of 6 months until something with smaller die, faster response, more GDDR (in the case of GPU) and better power consumption comes out. If something has a rebate it doesn't necessarily make it a bargain if it is still overkill for your needs. In the days of CUDA and GCN there are a plethora of very capable but slightly older GPU available at more realistic prices still from online vendors and in the second-hand auction sites.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    Well, I think that the whole idea of the rebate is that most people won't go to the trouble of filling them out. In this case, it was a bonus, and if I didn't get it, I didn't care too much. Usually, they show up sooner or later, though both this one and another $6.00 rebate from Newegg. gave me issues. (In that case, they said they never got it, so gave me a $6.00 gift card).

    In this case, I will hand it to Asus--though they were annoying enough to have lost a customer, when I called them, they made fixing it easy.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    I agree. Rebates are offered instead of reducing prices as they know that a large number of people will be attracted to purchasing the product due to the rebate, but will not take the time and effort to actually redeem it.

    Personally, I ignore rebates when shopping around for a product. If by chance the one I end up purchasing does have a rebate, I usually take the time to send in for it. Most of the time, if it's less than US$5, I don't bother, though, since it costs more in time and postage than I get back in the rebate.

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    My view of rebates is that "We have a new model coming in xx weeks, we need to clear out stock of the old model."

    Most of the time the rebate serves for stock clearance (out of date merchandise, overstock, anticipation of a manufacturer's price drop, etc.) . It is to assist the vendor and retailer, more so, than to give the customer a great benefit.
    Leslie in Montreal

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    Re: Am I wrong to be angry at this? (Rebate)

    Dear Mr. Robbins
    I understand you've had some difficulty with our rebate system. Please know that we don't really want your business and would prefer that you take it elsewhere in the future, yours
    John Dip****
    Newegg customer service
    Kurt Driver
    Vancouver, Canada

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