Holidays, Rebates, and a Guest Post

Hello!

It's now nearly a week into November and I am still blogging. To me this is just amazing this time of year.

A part of every holiday season are rebates on big ticket items. Like, cell phones, printers, computers, game systems, and maybe the occasional car. A majority of these rebates are mail-in. *I can see the eye rolls from here*

Coming from a guy who works at a retailer who offers mail-in rebates, take my advice. Don't give your sales associate shit when he tells you that the rebate is mail-in. No matter how much you ask, the guy on the other side of the counter doesn't have a way to make it instant. Many retailers, mine included, offer instant rebates if you buy your items on-line. Again, coming from a guy who works in retail, DO NOT under any circumstances go into the store, waste the sale rep's time and then when he is ready to close the sale, leave and say, well I am just going to buy on-line because they offer instant rebates.

If you are savvy enough to buy on-line, you are savvy enough to do all your research on-line, make your own decisions, and not clog up the retail stores with your questions that the sales rep will answer with a smile, even though your are being a dick and not buying from him. The sales reps that work on commission hate it when this happens. Why would you waste their time? Isn't their time worth something? [Yeah that's right we don't have "real" jobs" because we work in retail, somehow we are less human that you] While we are doing our job with the hopes that we will make a commission, you are sitting there knowing that you are not going to buy from me who is right in front of you diligently selling you a product, you are going to go home and buy your things on-line.

Then when you make the wrong choices on-line you are going to come into the retail stores and return it, wasting even more of the sales rep's time. Not only did you not allow me to do my job, you want ME to fix YOUR mistake.

Now you have wasted how much time? If you came in and listened to your sales rep, who is trained to discern what is good for his customer and what is not based on the questions he asked, you decided that coming up with an extra $50.00 was not worth it, because YOU had to mail something in to get that $50.00 back. Instead you have wasted a sales rep's time returning product you should never have purchased in the first place and if you had listened to your sales rep when he TRIED to help you, this would have never happened. Meanwhile, your sales rep has lost potentially hundreds of dollars helping you instead of selling to customers who value his time and opinion and will gladly shell out the extra $50.00 in the store knowing that they will do the right things and mail in the rebate.

And you wonder why you aren't getting the BEST service out there? If someone came up to you and took a C-Note out of your pocket, you'd be pretty pissed off too.

So take my opinion and rant for what it is. A how to guide for good service.

Just a quick little side bar for those naysayers out there who think that mail-in rebates are bullshit. You are right. The reason mail-in rebates are STILL around, is because only 60% send them in [in the case of Dell Computers it is more like 2% and the company pocketed $5,000,000 in profit because of it]. If more like 80% sent them in it would eat into the profits of either the manufacturer or the retailer, and I bet you would just see a reduction in prices. But because you are lazy you forget, or don't care to send them in, thus perpetuating the problem.

Get on it.

Now onto some fun stuff. I am a featured guest blogger on another blog tomorrow. So set your Google Readers, RSS feeders, or Blogger "Blogs I Follow" to Just Jules.

She is currently on vacation and asked for some help, so I offered up a guest post. I will warn you, because of time constraints, I used an old post. That post is on THIS blog, but because most have not read it because it was one of the first 3 posts I did on here, so I sent it over Jules. I am anchoring her guest posts tomorrow, so show up and show some love. I guess she saved the best for last, but some of her other guest posters are amazing bloggers, so go over there now, poke around, get to know Jules and her Guest Bloggers.

The post is a recount of a very eventful day in my life way back in 2006. I was younger, and going through some stuff and it was in the first few years the Wifey and I were dating. So don't bother looking for that post here. I would rather you show Jules some love and follow her blog too!