Retail Secrets Shopping Tips Discounts Coupons Promotion Codes: Retailers Count on You Not Mailing in Your Rebates!

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Retailers Count on You Not Mailing in Your Rebates!

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How many times have you purchased something because of a rebate offer? I am not very influenced by rebate offers, however, a rebate has tipped the scale when choosing between comparable products. But as you know Retail Secrets for Savvy Consumers does not miss out on any free money, so I always turn in my rebates.

What are the reasons most people don’t redeem rebates? One of the most popular reasons is laziness. Some of these rebate offers ask for you to send everything except your first born just to receive $10 or $20 back. It can be a bit of hassle to cut out UPC codes, especially for multiple products rebates. Last year, I had a rebate for contact lenses. The rebate was from CooperVision and it required me to remove the UPC code panel for all eight boxes of lenses. This was a true pain! However, I persevered and even made a photo copy of the panels for my records (in case my rebate got lost in the mail.) It required a little diligence but, I got the job done and my $30 check in the mail!

Buy Now and Save Later
Rebates are a way for retailers and manufacturers to offer a customer a discount without really giving you the discount. In essence, they can sell you a product for the regular price, but offer you savings contingent upon you being proactive to submit the rebate. It is quite brilliant actually. Just think about how many times you purchased something with a rebate offer and never mailed it in. Newsflash – the retailer is counting on you forgetting about sending your rebate in or flat out being to lazy to do it. The retailer comes out on top every time you fail to submit yours rebate.

Here are some statistics that might encourage you to mail in your rebates:

Some redemption estimates

BusinessWeek recently estimated a return rate of 60 percent. Some estimates have been as low as 2%. For example, nearly half of the 100,000 new TiVo subscribers in 2005 did not redeem their $100 rebates, allowing the company to keep $5,000,000 in additional profit.

PC Data in the Reston, VA estimates between "10 and 30 percent".

PlusNetMarketing in Wilmington, DE quotes 80%

Carol de Ville, the vice president of sales of Marco Sales and Incentives notes “In some cases, we do have redemption programs that go as high as forty to fifty per cent, but generally it’s about one to five per cent”. In the same article, John Challinor, advertising manager for Sony Canada remarks that “The industry average is less than ten percent....and it can be as low as one percent.