Friday, February 10, 2006

Rebates - Why the heck!

I am completely puzzled right now. The concept of rebates just does not get in my head. For the uninformed rebated are a kind of discounts you get when you buy something. Generally they are the mail in kinds, that is you buy something at its original cost but then you mail them the receipt and some form and they send you the money back. Why if one is supposed to get his money back should he pay it in the first place. Why does'nt the company offer discount at the point of purchase itself.

Hmmm.. I can probably try to reason that the company wants to pay directly to the customers with no middle man involved or some crap reason like that and live with this kind of rebate. But right now I am baffled. I was searching for speakers to buy and came accross a product Logitech Z 2300 - that ranged from $54 - $165. thats more than 66% difference. All because of different kinds of rebates. Not that this product is of poor quality or something, infact ZDNet gives it 'Spectacular' tag with a rating of 9.0/10.0. So is this rebate from the company or from the seller? if its company how does it vary so much among different stores, and if its the seller, why is he giving it when no one else is and that too >50%. Also the rebate form needs to be sent to the company and not the seller, so it has to be the company thats giving this rebate. ... is there any fruad in this? is the product of the same quality and workmanship as the other high cost versions of it? so I buy it without any fears?

posted by Nikhil @ 8:37 PM

1 Comments:

At 8:07 PM, Blogger Ankush said...

They may be working on probability. There can be some people who may buy the things because of rebate advantage and then may never send the form back to them. This happens so many times with us also. For example, when you buy Kellogs conrnflakes, you just have to answer some stupid questions (at the back of the box)and send them across. You get a small gift in return. I did it once and they sent me a small camera bad. I never did it again, just for the pain of sending a snail mail.

Another reason could be marketing. They are just trying to make their rebate more blatant and conspicuous. The financials may the same, but with a different packaging. And it does work and attract lot of people, as it attracted to you.

 

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