Frugal Framnett

One of the frustrations I have is the mail-in rebate, the worst part of it, I keep falling for it.

My problem is organization and my nature. I buy something, I then place the receipts in my wallet or in the bag, but before I am halfway home I have completely forgotten about the receipts & the rebate. Then a number of times in the near future I am bound to recall the rebates but then something else is going on and I forget it then too.

A couple of weeks go by and I am going through my wallet and I note some old receipts, I figure whatever it is I bought works so what do I do with the receipt? I throw it away, after all, I am not going to return it. Then a few days later I sit down to do the rebate & where is my receipt? If not that, then the rebate has expired.

The lesson is do not let mail in rebates influence you, instant rebates are okay, but I have never seen them outside of a grocery store.

Florence King writer for National Review Magazine wrote on this (and other things) see below the fold for her take on rebates!

From The complicated life: what computer geeks wrought by Florence King:

Last week after buying a new laptop, I ran into a man who had been in the store at the same time and overheard me grousing about the rebate system. Catching up with me in the parking lot, he launched into what he thought was a helpful story about how to handle rebates and warranties. He and his wife were a high-tech couple with four high-tech children, he explained. They usually had a dozen or more purchases going at once, but his wife had devised a foolproof system to keep track of everything.

She has this big, I mean big, spiral binder with see-through document pockets in all different colors. First, she cuts the bar codes off the boxes, makes four or five copies of each one, and puts them in a clear document cover. She sends in the rebates by certified mail, with return-receipt cards so we can prove that they got ‘em. Then she makes copies of all the post-office forms and puts them in a green document pocket–the post-office forms are green too, see, so you can color-coordinate and find them in a jiffy. Copies of their credit-card bills, along with copies of their bank statements to show proof of debit-card purchases, all go in red–ha-ha–document pockets. Originals and copies of their warranties, along with originals and copies of their cash-register receipts, go in yellow document pockets. Plus, just in case, she cuts out all the newspaper ads for the stuff they buy at big advertised sales, makes copies of each one, and keeps the whole shebang in an orange document pocket with removable date stamps.

At first, he went on, she xeroxed everything at her office, but her boss complained, so they bought their own home copier machine.

“And it came with a rebate and warranty,” I interrupted, “so she used it to make copies of them and put them in her binder too?”

“You better believe it!” he said proudly.