It's plastered all over the ad pages.
How many consumers really get their rebates?

Rebate Scams I Have Known

I will laud Office Max and Best Buy as of recent. Office Max recently dropped their mail-in rebates and started giving instant savings. Best Buy followed suit shortly thereafter. Shame on the rest. If they can't give me the product for the best price without a lot of hassles, I will not buy from them, period.
Other places that I will shop include Sears which has a really no-hassle return policy. Costco has been recommended by many for their "we'll take anything back" return policy.

• Thankfully I quit buying their junk.
  Seems a lot of people didn't get the rebate check they expected. Instead they received a VISA debit card with a $20 credit. Great! Another credit card number out there for identity thieves to find. Besides now having a new credit card you have one with some interesting strings attached. Your account will be debited $3 for every 90 days of inactivity. This card can be overdrawn as well. A minimum $25 overdraft fee applies. So if you use it and spend the $20 account balance after 90 days, you will get a bill for at least $28 dollars. In this day and age of VISA and Mastercard activity triggered identity theft, do you really want to buy a product from a company that doesn't care if it jeopardizes it's customers' credit?

• Bought a laptop. $100 dollar mail-in rebate.
  Rebate never came. Finally called. Waited on hold for hours. Their rebate center claimed emphatically that they sent out a check and it was cashed, presumably by me. They requested that I provide proof that I didn't cash the check I never received. How would you prove that?

• Six mail-in rebates to get a computer package for half price? Ridiculous. You still pay sales tax on the full price which wipes out 2 of the rebates.

• REJECTED! They argued that I had returned the product. Product: PNY memory. Installed on computer. I never returned it. They told me I had to prove that I didn't return it. After a number of emails and resending them the information they sent a note saying the rebate was valid, here's a new tracking number. Turns out the tracking number was bogus. A few weeks later I get a card in the mail. I must NOW resubmit everything via USPS. This is no easy rebate, this is BS.

• Their rebate monkeys are the pros at rejecting your rebate. They simply say, "Your rebate wasn't postmarked in time. If you disagree with this then you have to submit proof that the USPS was at fault. Oh Darn, the envelope was shredded, it's your word against ours and our lawyers. What can you do? Simply NEVER buy products based on the rebates. There are deals out there to be had. Use your buying dollars to send the message that you don't buy products that lie about phony rebate offers.