Winnie Mirchandani started a series of posts on business processes that badly need “angioplasty“. Processing rebates is certainly a most convoluted process – unfortunately by design. As Business Week points out, 40% of all rebates never get redeemed – and the industry counts on it.
- My best rebate experience:
- Costco. Simple, online rebate processing, prompt payment, online audit available for years.
- Worst rebate experience:
- Handspring
(The Palm spinoff reunited with Palm again). Sent in not only
paperwork, but an actual, working older Palm III as trade-in
unit. The $100 rebate never arrived, not even after numerous
phone-calls and emails. They demanded copies of everything – but
of course I can’s just copy the trade-in unit. My
loss: $100 rebate, $50 trade-in value for the old Palm, about a
full day of my time fighting the bureaucracy. Did they lose
me as a customer? No.. still purchased all subsequent Treo
models:-(
Christmas shopping season is here, and we’re
all loyal players in the Grand Customer Deception game … I’m afraid the
angioplasty won’t be performed any time soon.
Tags: rebate, rebates, customer service, customer disservice, retail, deception, business process
Process Angioplasty: Rebates – Round 3? 4? n…
Winnie Mirchandani started a series of posts on business processes that badly need “angioplasty”. Processing rebates is certainly a most convoluted process – unfortunately often by design. Here’s another classic case, served up by…