Rebate - What Rebate!

I am "rebate" challenged. I am always looking for a bargain and do not make a purchase without comparing prices or "finding a deal."

The Sunday flyers always advertise sales and when I go to the store, to buy the advertised computer, camera, or printer, more often than not ,the discounted price is contingent on "the mail in rebate." With my track record I may as well kiss this money goodbye!

I have never received a rebate check. I firmly believed they were fictional, until last weekend when my husband received one in the mail for my son's hunting rifle.

I have mailed in numerous rebates; meticulously following the printed criteria and have never received a single rebate check in the mail. I have gone to the trouble of copying everything and checking off the requirements, one by one as they were met. It never fails....That rebate never comes.

I have received several letters declining my rebates for a variety of reasons such as "not enclosing the UPC". When I turned around and mailed in the copy of the UPC I had saved for my records I was declined once again "because they wanted the original from the box". I almost find it humorous that the companies mysteriously receive only a portion of the rebate requirements when I tape everything to a single sheet of paper and enclose it all in the same the sealed envelope.

I told my husband that since he had successfully received a mail in rebate check he was in charge of this from now on. More importantly he told me what I had been doing wrong all of these years when he replied "You don't sell someone a gun and tell them you are going to give' em a rebate and then not"