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Jaidness
04-05-2005, 08:49 AM
Best Buy phasing out mail-in rebate offers
By MARK ALBRIGHT, Times Staff Writer
Published April 2, 2005

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Mail-in rebates. Don't you love 'em?

You get sucked in by a sale price only to discover you have to fill out a form and mail it in to get the savings. Then you develop eyestrain combing the fine print in fear some faceless processor will reject your paperwork on a technicality. After waiting months, your $5 check arrives.

Now Best Buy Inc. says those pesky mail-in rebates have outlived their usefulness. The chain will phase them out over the next two years.

"Our customers are telling us they just hate them," said Ron Boire, general merchandise manager for the Minneapolis consumer electronics chain. "So we are going to take an industry leadership role to eliminate them."

It's going to take two years because the chain thinks it will take that long to ween manufacturers who bankroll most rebate offers to redirect their promotional spending.

With 17 percent of the nation's consumer electronics market, Best Buy's decision should carry a lot of clout.

Best Buy initially used rebates to draw customers into the stores. Unlike supermarket mail-in coupons that a huge majority of shoppers throw away, consumers can save $5 on a toaster to several hundred dollars on a computer, so the rebate redemption rate is very high.

But the marketing novelty wore off years ago. Customers are so conditioned to mailing them that they have become an annoyance.

The payoff takes so long many consumers wonder why the store just didn't offer a sale price taken off at the register.

"They send the rebate in and remain aggravated until they get their check," Boire said.

Consumer protection agencies have fielded thousands of complaints about rebates that are too often rejected for the most technical reasons and rarely offer customers any place to call to see if the paperwork is lost. Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro in August sued Best Buy for some of its rebate offers.

Don't expect all the rebates to turn into deeper price cuts for everybody who shops Best Buy, however.

As part of the company's plan to offer incentives that reward its most loyal customers, Boire said the company will try shifting a lot of the rebate promotional cash to promotions in its Reward Zone program.

Shoppers pay $9.99 to join that program, which entitles them to frequent shopper points for purchases. The points can then be converted to gift cards that can only be used at Best Buy.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/02/news_pf/Business/Best_Buy_phasing_out_.shtml