From the Computerworld Blogs

Rebates are clunky, bricks and mortar affairs that involve paper forms, clipping labels from boxes and sending them via the U.S. mail. Then you wait 10 weeks to see if the check actually arrives. Why do retailers persist with such programs in the era of e-commerce, Web services and instant gratification? Aren’t rebates legacy technology? Well, not exactly.

This week, after dutifully completing five different mail-in rebates required for the purchase of a “free” computer bundle at Circuit City and mailing them all in I decided to ask an expert why a high-tech retailer would ever want to resort to such low-tech promotions. The story of my struggles to fill out all of the rebate forms and comply with all of the terms and conditions was the subject of yesterday’s blog. Today I look to the expertise of consumer electronics analyst Stephen Baker at The NPD Group to explain the ultimate wisdom of the mail-in rebate.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Tech Musing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.