Tracking the elusive rebates
This fall, Michelle Harley bought two Kyocera phones, one for herself and one for her mother, Patricia, under Verizon Wireless' prepaid FreeUp plan.
The price: $130 each, with the lure of a rebate -- either $30 cash or a card worth $50 in wireless minutes.
Michelle, fresh out of college and working as a systems engineer at Lockheed-Martin, opted for the minutes. Her mom wanted the cash, to cut the net price of the phone. Michelle, a good daughter, took care of the paperwork.
Anyone who's bought electronic gear lately knows the drill: You cut out the UPC bar code, fill out a form, attach an original receipt. You want the discount, you jump through the hoops.
That's what Michelle Harley says she did after buying the phones. She cut out two bar codes, filled out two forms, attached two receipts. She mailed each request in a separate envelope, and waited.
Just before Christmas, Michelle's phone card arrived.
But about two days later, she got a letter about the rebate on her mother's phone: The request was being returned to her, it said, because the UPC code was missing.
"Sincerely," it was signed. "Consumer Affairs Department."
Fed up
This is where Bob Harley, a Collegeville, Pa., resident and Bucks County court stenographer, enters the story.
Harley and his wife, annoyed that Michelle was being shortchanged, each called the toll-free number for Young America Corp., the Minnesota company that does rebate fulfillment for Verizon and other major consumer-product companies.
Each time, they were told that there was no UPC code in the envelope and that they should have photocopied the code as evidence, Harley says.
Harley called back and asked for a supervisor. Same message.
Harley says he was staring at the remains of the box as he made the second call, and realized there were other coded numbers on it, too. How about he fax over the box top? Nope, that won't do, he was told.
Checkmate?
It might have been. Frankly, I'd have given up about then. It's just $30, and my time is worth something, isn't it?
But to Harley, it was a matter of principle.
I share his annoyance at rebates, and perhaps his general level of suspiciousness about transactions in which a company's mistakes are profitable.
A different explanation
So I called Young America myself and got an oddly different story. Nancy Wirth, vice president for client services, told me the rebate was rejected because the Harleys sent in "a copy of the bar code."
"We're very sensitive on behalf of our clients," Wirth said.
Well, let me take a moment to be sensitive on behalf of my client, the consumer.
I don't think any company should be insensitive to fraud. But if rebate theft is going on here, it's not clear to me who's more likely to be stealing from whom.
Rebates start out favoring the companies that promise them, by allowing them to tout a discounted price that some portion of customers will never get.
It's one thing if that's because those customers are lazy, disorganized or insensitive to price. But why should all disputed calls favor the business?
Can I say for sure that Michelle Harley's envelope included the missing code? Of course not, though I tend to believe her when she says, "I'm pretty meticulous on my rebates."
Make copies
But I can say this: If you send in the original bar code and the company loses it, the best proof you'd have would be the copy Young America says it won't accept as proof.
By the way, Young America did finally relent, promising to send the Harleys the $30 check.
Why the change of heart?
"My indicator is that if someone calls a couple of times, he's probably not a fraud consumer," Wirth said.
If you're keeping tabs, that was three times, plus a call from a journalist.
It shouldn't be that way.
XJeff Gelles is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Write to him at: The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, PA 19101 or e-mail consumerwatch@phillynews.com.