Mail-in Rebate Rant

[LBrown59]

I still got charged $10 by the bank but didnt feel like fighting bushnell over it..
Brian

You can avoid this by cashing the check instead of depositing it.

 

[tallyho8]

You can avoid this by cashing the check instead of depositing it.

Most banks won't cash a check for you unless you have an account there. And then if it bounces they debit your account.

You usually can't cash it at their bank because it is out of state, but if they have a branch if your town and you don't have an account there, they usually charge you about $10 to cash the check.

You can't win.

 

[Alan L.]

We finished our house 20 months or so ago. We bought all GE Profile appliances on the basis that if you got 3, 4, or 5 you got a rebate. I got a frig, dishwasher, double oven, and microwave and the rebate was supposed to be $300. We actually were leaning to a different dishwasher brand but got the GE for the rebate.

We made the deal and paid for the appliances at the appliance dealer (not a box store). The salesman gave us a sheet to fill in information for the rebate. This was too early in the construction for the appliances to be ready for delivery, so we did not have serial numbers.

The salesman advised us to send in the form, and said we could call them with the serial numbers later, after they were delivered. We had made the purchase and paid for it, he did not mention any kind of deadline.

About 3 weeks later when I got around to filling out the rebate form I saw in the very small print that the rebate had expired 1 day earlier. No problem I thought, I bought them 3 weeks ago. When the appliances were delivered I sent in another copy of the form with the serial numbers filled in and explained that this was what the told me to do.

I never received a dime rebate from GE. They sub out the rebate fulfillment to a 3rd party who won't even respond to me.

Crooked if you ask me.

You can bet the GE appliances are going to get full use of the warranty. In fact they have already been here to fix the microwave and fridge. And the fridge is giving trouble again, first the ice dispenser, now everything in the vegetable drawer is freezing, and the temp is set the way it should be.

In all honesty we are very fond of the GE appliances, especially the convection oven, but I am still hacked off at them.

I don't like having $300 stolen from me.

 

[MarkV]

We sent in a rebate on a set of new cell phones a while back and the rebate came, months later, as a debit card, which was a new twist to me. That was fine until half the places we tried to use it would not except it. Fortunately the place I buy beer would take it so it was gone pretty fast.

MarkV

 

[thatguy]

We also had rebates on two phones.. We filled out separate rebate forms for each phone and included a copy of a recent phone bill for some reason - both were mailed together in the same envelope.. It got rejected because we didnt include 2 copies of the phone bill..

I ended up downloading a PDF of the phone bill and emailed it to them for the second rebate.. Which we did get..

Brian

 

[LBrown59]

Most banks won't cash a check for you unless you have an account there. And then if it bounces they debit your account.

You usually can't cash it at their bank because it is out of state, but if they have a branch if your town and you don't have an account there, they usually charge you about $10 to cash the check.

You can't win.

This is how it works at my bank if i deposit sombodys check into my checking account and it bounces my bank charges my checking accunt a returned check fee.
If I just cash that check at my bank and the check bounces there is no return check charge because I never deposited the check into my checking account.
The bank can not charge my checking account a returned check fee because no check was returned against my checking acccount.

 

[Podunkadunk]

***UPDATE***

Dang if I didn't get a rebate check in the mail yesterday from Remington for $40.00!

Still, I think mail-ins are a ripoff...just not this one

Podunk

 

[tallyho8]

This is how it works at my bank if i deposit sombodys check into my checking account and it bounces my bank charges my checking accunt a returned check fee.
If I just cash that check at my bank and the check bounces there is no return check charge because I never deposited the check into my checking account.
The bank can not charge my checking account a returned check fee because no check was returned against my checking acccount.

Are you saying that you can cash a bad check at your bank and they won't take the money out of your account when it bounces? How does the bank get their money back? A lot of crooked people would love to have a bank like that.

 

[shvl73]

Are you saying that you can cash a bad check at your bank and they won't take the money out of your account when it bounces? How does the bank get their money back? A lot of crooked people would love to have a bank like that.

Seems odd to me too.

 

[Bird]

This is how it works at my bank if i deposit sombodys check into my checking account and it bounces my bank charges my checking accunt a returned check fee.
If I just cash that check at my bank and the check bounces there is no return check charge because I never deposited the check into my checking account.
The bank can not charge my checking account a returned check fee because no check was returned against my checking acccount.

Since I don't know your bank, I can't say you're mistaken, but I'd sure be surprised to learn of a bank that didn't have a way of getting that money back from you.