Good Riddance to Mail-In Rebates!

Anybody who knows me knows how much I love gadgets. With that in mind, here's some truly good news:

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It's one of life's little annoyances, particular if you're a frequent buyer of consumer electronics: the mail-in rebate. First you have to read and re-read the fine print. Then you need to hold tight to and appropriately fill out exactly the right paperwork by a certain deadline. And then there's the anxiety-ridden wait to hear via snail mail if you made the right offering to the rebate gods.

We go through it, of course, to save money or justify a higher-end product, but all the while wonder whether the discount is worth all the hassle.

Well all that may soon be a thing of the past now that OfficeMax has followed Best Buy's lead in doing away with mail-in rebates due to customer dissatisfaction.

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I can't count how many times I have purchased something with a mail-in rebate and neglected or forgotten to send it in. It is a form of price discrimination, distinguishing between buyers who value savings enough to go through the process of filling out the paperwork and sending in the rebate and those who don't. Most consumers, however, increasingly see this as a sale that amounts to little more than a scam.

Technology Review Central has this to say:

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After purchasing my last piece of computer hardware, which offered a rebate, I firmly decided to never go through that hassle again. The entire point of the rebate is to save the manufacturer money, not you. Rather than lowering the price, which guarantees everyone wins, they offer a rebate fully realizing that a significant portion of buyers will either neglect to send it in, or worse yet, will be denied due to some asinine detail in the fine print, such as what happened to me.

1. They know a certain percentage of the rebates will go unclaimed.
2. They know a certain percentage of the rebates can be denied due to some technical detail, i.e.: the fine print.
3. They are able to collect statistical information from the returned forms, thus saving them further money in acquisition of that information on their buyers.
4. They build a direct marketing database from the information you provide, so get ready for some junk mail or spam!

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Unfortunately, I usually fall into category #1. I make many of my purchases before going on a big trip somewhere and then forget about the rebate and/or run out of time to mail it in after I return.

While I agree with Tyler Cowen and Tim Harford that price discrimination can lead to better product offerings, I am very happy to see mail-in rebates lose traction in the consumer electronics marketplace.

Hattip Lifehacker.