Playing Rebate Roulette
So it looks like we’re in for another installment of the cellphone industry’s favorite game, “Savings Over Convenience”.
As well all know, that pretty little $199 price tag comes as a result of carrier subsidization. A blessing/burden all of us, especially the phone nerds amongst us, are all too familiar with. Well, it turns out that some retailers are planning on using this to their advantage.
Seems that most retailers are offering the standard Sprint 2-year service agreement rebate in its standard mail in form, which allows you to reclaim your rebate at the end of a stamp/receipt/envelope/post-office intensive process. A small inconvenience that Sprint knows to be just a little bit more inconvenient than most people prefer, which means less rebates needing to be honored. Caaaching.
Well a select group of retailers are going to sweeten their Pre availability by simply taking that rebate off at the register. No mailing involved. Which will save some money at the register, and some time at the mailbox. Uber convenient of them Aye?
Looks like Best Buy and RadioShack are the first to offer said Fast Food-ish celly convenience, but I would hope that some bigwigs elsewhere would see how this would be beneficial and start offering it in their fine retail environments. We’ll see.
Read On Rebate Ravenous Readers!