Sprint PCS Rebate Ripoff Overland Park, Kansas

Sprint use to offer rebates for its phone upgrades that were automatically credited to the account holder's monthly bill. Recently it changed its policy by sending out a gift card in lieu of the account credit. However, the account holder has to fill out a form, photocopy the receipt and mail these to sprint within a certain time frame - this is probably done to cut done on the number of rebates it actually makes. Nonetheless, I completed these items and got an email confirming my rebate request was received. A month later I called sprint to get the status of my gift card. I was told my "request" was not honored because of some technicality, but the sprint agent quickly said he could fix the problem and mail me the gift card right away. He said I should have received a post card alerting me to the problem with gift card request - I never received this postcard. When I asked the agent why sprint doesn't also email account holder about this kind of problem like it did when it confirmed receipt of my request and he said he didn't know. It's clear to me that sprint is making it difficult to obtain a rebate that it uses extensively to market its phones.