According to this article, Best Buy is phasing out use of mail-in rebates! This is fantastic news. I always get ripped off by those, and I don’t use them anymore unless I’m absolutely stuck.
I wonder how they’ll do this? A lot of the rebates come from the makers of the products that they sell. Hopefully they’ll be able to throw their weight into eliminating this scam.
Nobody knows the exact statistics behind rebates, but its estimated that somewhere between 50 and 90% of mail-in rebates are never successfully claimed either due to never having been sent in, or due to technicalities in the submission process being abused by the manufacturer to avoid paying the money.
See also:
theofficeweblog
Slashdot discussion on this announcement
StopMailInRebates.com
Political Animal on Rebates
Rebate Runaround