[kismac] Re: Usb intersil

ps. it is a little off-topic, but can anyone explain me what the deal is with mail-in rebate?! i did never understand this, is it money for giving them your address?

Rebates are the new American way to make things cheap but expensive.

Basically, you buy a product and you have all these rebates you mail off for. The money comes back in weeks or even several months. Their hope is you don't mail back the rebate - and 20-30% of people don't. They also hope you forget to include the receipt or some other important info, so they don't have to send the rebate.

As far as I can tell, rebates come back pretty reliably if you're careful.

Why do they do these? Lots of people don't send them back. A few don't include all the info. The money, from the time the supplier ships the product to the store until the rebate comes back which is often 6-12 months, can be invested or used for something else. It also can be used to generate lots of sales at the end of one year in order to make the books look better, but then the next year comes and they have to do it again because of all the rebates they had to produce... you see how that works. Lots of little tricks, but I would say the customer usually does benefit from rebates.

-Galen


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