Irregular Payments

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It’s amazing what a little venting can accomplish.

A day after I wrote of my problems getting ahold of anyone in my attempt to get a rebate from DirecTV actually paid, I cooled off a bit and tried using their standard customer service contact form. None of the comment topics they offered matched mine (’Angry Rebate Seeker’), but I picked one that was reasonably close and sent off my missive anyway. A rather pointless exchange occurred between myself and a few CSRs telling me essentially the same thing (”We’re sorry, but the volume of rebates is so large that the payment has been delayed blah blah blah“), but at least I got to vent a bit.

Nevertheless, less than a week after the last exchange, what appears in our PO box but a shiny new rebate check for $100. Coincidence? I doubt it. The whole rebate system is just shy of a bait-and-switch tactic, with retailers counting on us screwing up, or giving up, and pocketing the difference.

That said, threatening to contact the FTC when they don’t meet their own terms appears to get rebate offerers motivated - not only did I finally get my rebate, yesterday I received a stack of free pay-per-view vouchers. And the FTC still got my complaint…

You can bet I’m going to carefully read the terms are on those before I even think of using them!

“When we have some money…” is getting to be one of those phrases that I’m really starting to hate. My wife has been uttering statements starting with that bit for the last few months, in reference to all sorts of things we are wanting.

Things like:

• going on a nice vacation: $500-$1,000+
• purchasing some additional exercise equipment: $100-$1,000+
• a gallon or two of paint for some naked trim we have in our home: $25-$50
• Or additional new underwear for our potty-training-in-progress toddler: $5

The first two would certainly be Good Things™, and setting aside a little extra every month would be an excellent way to afford them without any undue damage to the budget versus a big one time payout.

The last two just annoy me, however. Why? Because they’re already in our budget, Dear! That is precisely what that Clothing and that Household line item are all about. If we overspend the budget in certain areas, we either need to tighten up ship, or we need to adjust the budget.

But here’s the thing: we’re not overspending in those areas. Go ahead. Spend. Be a good consumer. We planned on it…

I realize part of the reason rebates are so popular with businesses is that the customer buys their product because of them, but then fails to actually get the rebate. Some people are just lazy or forgetful enough to neglect to do so. Or, often, the company make the process a big enough pain that the customer fails to fill out the form correctly or just flat out gives up on the process. Or, they ignore you and hope you go away.

DirecTV appears to be employing method #3.

We initially signed up with DirecTV when we moved out to the countryside, choosing it over it’s competitors mainly because of one channel (that we haven’t even added to our lineup yet): Sentanta Sports. I’m a rabid rugby fan, but you can’t watch it anywhere in the US as far as I can tell, except on Sentanta. But that doesn’t really make a difference to the matter at hand, does it?

When we signed up, they were running a $100 rebate promotion. So of course, I eventually got around to submitting it (but well before it was set to expire). Unlike some of my rebate attempts in the past, this was an utterly painless process that took less than a minute on DirecTV’s site. Almost immediately received my confirmation email stating the “Please allow 6-8 weeks to receive your $100 rebate check by mail” boilerplate. I naively assumed that actually getting the rebate might be as painless.

Nevertheless, my calendar popped up yesterday to let me know that it had been eight weeks since I had initially submitted the rebate, so I made a mental note to look into who I should be harassing soon. But what do I find in my email inbox today but another brief email stating “Your rebate submission has been received! Please allow 6-8 weeks for processing.” Going to the rebate site, I find their contact form, spent several minutes tracking down all the minutiae they require, put in my brief, cordial note on the problem (despite my initial impulse to word it along the lines of “What’s the deal with this latest email? Where the !$@! is my rebate already?“), and hit submit. Blank page, but for two words:

Illegal Request

@#&* You, DirecTV Rebate Department!