OnRebate.com - TigerDirect Rebate Ripoff, unreasonable rebate policy use as irritants to void claims Nationwide USA & Canada Internet

Dear Harvey-

We are just a rebate company that processes rebates for manufacturers. The reason we ask in the Terms to send the rebates in separate envelopes is because each rebate is filed separately by manufacturer and we need to attach all proper documents to each rebate (including the envelope).

The purpose of all the envelopes is to show the date the rebate gets postmarked and if we do not prove to the vendors that your rebates were postmarked within the 30 days, we do not get paid for processing the rebate.

if you send more than one rebate within one envelope then only 1 rebate will show the postmark date, since we separate the rebates by vendors then only one rebate can get accepted.

It is important that you always read the Terms and Conditions and follow them through for this are the rules set by manufacturers and they are there for a reason.

What a load of BS! What manufacturer requirements? Manufacturers set a submission period for a claim only to ease them in scheduling their other promotions; they always have long grace periods. Their interest is in marketing (sales), not scamming the customers. OnRebate.com and TigerDirect are synonymous. If there is so much issue gluing two parties together, they are for sure married. Google has almost hyphenated these two(2) names. Right hand puts demands on the left hand. Just drill on stupidity and you will not produce a viable answer or excuse to that matter. I will listen for a little while and document this progress very carefully. This might not be the end yet for a company that operates on irritants. I have never encountered staff that is so rude. Even if they promised you that they will update records within 24 hours after they received the fax, they would just delay the task just to irritate you; hoping that you might just give up and they would not have to pay. You faxed the documents to a staff's attention and this staff would be conveniently “off” following that so that the records were not updated. When she is working then she could not locate the documents you faxed for her attention. Finally, she had the fax “placed in front of her” and she would tell you that she was too busy to update at that moment as too many calls are coming in for her. This was what happened to me. I have no doubt that they are busy, and all the calls are irritating ones too. This is the creation and design of their own. Finally, it was agreed that the records will be updated at the end of the day, so that she could hang up her phone.

Two days went by; the records were still not updated. I begin to understand that the office of OnRebate.com must be “a mess”. Whether that is deliberately or by design, they will lose your documents. This is the reason that they demand your rebate has to be send certified, other than placing a cost on you [so that you find it less appealing to claim], and they could “lose” your documents if arrived not certified. They should even have problems when documents pass from one staff to another as there is no certification, I bet.

I found a way to make sure that they would receive the requested 10-page documents and at the end of the day the documents would not be accidentally fallen in to the waste basket that left no trace for the following day, I began to fax the document set to them daily. If I check the computer and the records were still not updated. I could safely assume that that the documents have gone astray. I would fax one set to the management and one set to the staff who supposed to attend to my issue, stating that at time of the fax it was still pending updates. This will ensure that less likely that OnRebate.com can claim that the fax machine is not working or the documents have gone astray. They should have a double reminder, daily, to address their inventiveness.

It was a pain to get documents updated as “received” by them today. However, there is still no guarantee that one will receive the rebate; their exercise is to create as much excuses that you eventually will not receive it.

One of the rebates was listed as:

Apply for rebate: Oct 1, 2005
Rebate was accepted:

Nov 2, 2005
Payment Processed:

Dec 7, 2005

Judging on the pattern, it is likely that there was no check issued yet, and it might not be sent out till January 2006.

Since the rebate checks are not sent out certified, it is very likely to get lost, based on the confidence level of OnRebate.com with respect to the postal system and that of their own operation, I should begin to check my mail box for the rebate from Dec 23, 2005 on. I should also begin to send them the daily reminders again! Just in case.

After I have received all my rebates, I will return again with a new update. Maybe I will suggest how to deal with such setup from another angle.

It is pitiful for the staff, the ones that get up in the morning heading off, and daily, to deal with irritated customers that are deliberately created by the company. It is sad to make a living in this manner. I would be on antidepressants and anxiolytics at no time for a life like that!

Finally we have received all the rebates May 12, 2006. That was after 7-8 months of effort. The rebates arrived only 5-10 days before motions were to be filed.

The claims were successful, only because we prepared for them [in detail]. We were forced to comply to the claim documentation because we were only given the fine prints to the claims after the purchases. At a moment we were thinking of returning the purchases.

TigerDirect has lost 7 customers: 3 pharmacies, 2 law firms and 2 retailers. No doubt that none of us will purchase from TigerDirect again. Their email-promotions now go straight to "trash" and those that come in the mail are good for the fireplace.

Even for a law firm ... it is not justify for going through all this... think of the hourly rate for professionals. We went throught this only for Principal.

Stay away ... it is not worth it to deal with TigerDirect!