What is the best way to issue rebates to customers?
- posted by: Patoshi on 2016-05-19
- tagged:
customer-development, customer-service
- score: 2
I sell products with mail-in rebates. Currently I either use PayPal or mail a check to send a rebate. What other methods are there to streamline this process? How do the big electronic stores do this? Do they do it in house or subscribe to some type of service to issue out money to people?
Answer 10937
I upgrade my PC quite often with components that include rebates. I find that almost universally, rebates are done in the form of a debit cards mailed to me.
Generally the process works like this:
- I am given instructions to go to the manufacturer’s website (the manufacturer being Asus, Corsair, etc) and to register for my rebate with my personal details and details of my purchase.
- After following the process on the website, I am provided with a form to print that has been customized for my rebate and that includes some sort of code that can be scanned.
- Next I mail in the form, an original receipt / invoice printed from the retail website, and the UPC from the product packaging.
- Often I’ll get an email about a week or two later that my rebate request had been processed and that my rebate card is on the way.
- A few weeks later, I get a prepaid debit card preloaded with $20 or whatever the rebate amount was to spend anywhere major credit cards are accepted.
I think there are reasons the process works like this:
- If I pre-register for the rebate, they don’t have to type in all my information. They just scan a bar-code on the form I printed in step 2 above.
- It’s hard to spend the exact amount on the card and splitting payments is annoying so often a dollar or two on the card ends up unused and forgotten.
- The rebate providers probably get a kick-back from Visa/Mastercard from interchange.
- By making me mail in the original UPC, the manufacturer knows I will not be able to return the product to the retailer. It is cheaper for manufacturers to provide service through their limited warranties than to take back store returns. (For this reason, I always make sure the hardware is fully-functional before sending in my UPC label.)
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.