Our investigation was completed and our office was able to come to an agreement with the business.  They agreed to provide the rebates for consumers.  I am glad you received yours.  Please let me know if you have any further questions or problems with the refund.

So it looks like they didn’t pay this out of the goodness of their hearts but because they were under the gun from a government investigation. Regardless, I’m glad to have my money.

• 11/24/2006 – Purchased ATS cordless phone as part of Office Depot Black Friday sale
• 12/9/2006 – Mailed required rebate forms, receipts, and proofs of purchase to rebate processor
• 3/16/2007 – After receiving a postcard stating I had to activate a prepaid calling card in the box (I already had), I re-activated the card and resubmitted the rebate documentation for payment.
• 9/21/2007 – I sent an email to customer service for ATS and the rebate processor with scans of my rebate documentation threatening a BBB and AG complaint and demanding payment of the rebate claim.
• 9/25/2007 – I receive a response from Julie Diaz at ATS claiming that the company was no longer doing business with the rebate processor and was processing the claims from their corporate office. The copies of the documentation I provided was to be forwarded to the appropriate department for prompt payment.
• 2/27/2008 – I file a BBB complaint against ATS for non-payment of the rebate.
• 4/3/2008 – I receive an email from a civil investigator with the Georgia Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs requesting information on my complaint for inclusion in their investigation. I promptly send the investigator copies of my documentation and other information provided.
• 7/20/2009 – I finally receive my rebate from ATS! It came in a plain white envelope with my name and address handwritten with no return address and a postmark from Connecticut. The check was handwritten and had a form letter attached simply apologizing for the length of time it took them to process the claim.

So it took ATS approximately 136 weeks to process my rebate, which is just a shade over two and a half years! I’ve deposited the check, so let’s just hope it doesn’t bounce.

According to their story, consumers that bought the Snuggie through the TV offer have been receiving “rebate” checks in the mail for $8.95. However, we you read the fine print you see that by cashing or depositing the check you are enrolled in a program called Great Fun, and if you don’t cancel within 30 days you will be charged for a year’s membership at a rate of $149.99. Unfortunately many Snuggie owners didn’t see that fine print and end up getting charged the membership fee for a service they weren’t even aware they were enrolling in. The practice isn’t illegal (long distance companies did this for years where by cashing a check you were agreeing to switch service, and other programs have used similar tactics), but it certainly qualifies as sneaky and makes a lot of folks irate.

For my longtime readers, you probably recognized the name Great Fun. In fact, Great Fun is a program run by Trilegiant Corporation, who I have posted about in the post Rape and Pillage Trilegiant for Free Gift Cards back in 2007. Yes, you can get tons of free money and gift cards by signing up for their trial offers and cancelling in the trial period. Just work the system in moderation, as they seem to be catching on a lot more quickly to those of us who are gaming the system for free stuff. However, if you do it right you can end up with hundreds of dollars in free gift cards and rebate checks for only the effort of signing up and calling to cancel the service.

Here is my only slightly educated take on what could possibly happen (my degrees are in accounting and finance, not economics): this $700 billion bailout package, along with recent moves by the Federal Reserve to pump more liquidity into the market, will greatly increase the money supply. If the money supply is greatly increased, the likely result is inflation, likely at a pretty drastic rate. In other words, things will cost more now than they do in the future, and if recent trends are any indication the rate you could get in return for cash in the bank will likely not keep pace with inflation, meaning you will lose purchasing power on the money you already have.

With that possibility in mind (and I stress it is only a possibility), I would argue that this would be a great time to find good deals and stock up on items that you know you will use. I wrote about this concept as it relates to food inflation here, but this would really apply to all types of goods. I write quite often about my love of chasing deals at Walgreens and CVS when I get items for free but even better, and I think now is a great time to make sure you are making the most of those deals.

For instance, I purchased 8 Oral-B toothbrushes from Walgreens last week, which each produced a Register Rewards coupon for the purchase price. With the coupons I collected, I will then go and purchase the various items that are free after rebate this month in the Walgreens rebate catalog, or maybe on a similar coupon deal if one comes up before the coupons expire in a couple of weeks. Now, do I really need 8 toothbrushes now? Of course not. However, toothbrushes don’t go bad, so I will have a stockpile for the future. If times get tough and I wouldn’t otherwise have money for toothbrushes, I have a stash I can draw from. The same concept would apply to many other items you can get on the cheap by just being a smart shopper.

Of course you shouldn’t act as if it is a certainty that economic doom is around the corner. Continue going to work, investing and saving money, and shopping wisely. Stockpiling is a cornerstone of a frugal lifestyle, but make sure that your actions would make as much sense if there is no economic downturn at all.

One of the rebates came as promised, however it was clear from the beginning that there would be issues with the second. Once the rebate showed up on the rebate processor’s website, it sat in the processing stage for weeks with the notation “Error: Pending Verification”. After several weeks I called the rebate center and was told they would escalate the issue and to call back in a week. After a week in which the status changed to noncompliance, I called the rebate center back and was initially told again that they would escalate the issue and to call back in another week. Of course I wasn’t satisfied with that and when I escalated to a supervisor I was given a BS story that it was a system issue that would be resolved in a couple of days.

A week later when I receive a postcard stating that the rebate is in noncompliance and that I have until a certain date resolve the issue if I would like the rebate to be paid. So of course I call again, and again I am told by the first representative that they will escalate the issue and to call back in a week, and then I escalate to a supervisor who tells me that they aren’t sure I can claim two different rebates on the purchase of a single printer and that they will escalate the issue to the account manager, and finally I speak to the floor manager who flatly states that their policy is not to honor two rebate offers on a single item purchase and that although the rebates were advertised together only one would be paid. I asked for the address for their principal place of business (the rebate processor, not Office Depot), and they refused to even confirm what rebate fulfillment company they were and would only give me an address for the Office of the President of Office Depot. They also refused to escalate me to the next level supervisor and the manager I spoke to told me he was the highest authority I could speak to.

I contacted Office Depot customer service about the issue, however I have never received a reply. I used to consider Office Depot to be one of the best in terms of standing behind its advertised rebates. About four years ago I had a rebate offered through a manufacturer for an item sold at Office Depot that Office Depot was willing to pay after the manufacturer refused. However in the last two years or so there has been a definite change in the culture at Office Depot with regards to customer service and now if you do a rebate for a purchase from them you are pretty well assured that Office Depot will not help if something goes wrong. And in this instance the rebate was offered by Office Depot itself and not by the manufacturer. How disappointing!

At this point in my SlickDealing career I have only had three rebate deals that did not come through, and sadly two of them have been through Office Depot.  That is why I am so thankful that we are finally getting Staples here in Houston, so we can finally have an office supply store that provides good customer service unlike Office Depot and OfficeMax.

My brother-in-law and his wife are expecting any day now (I think their due date is in two weeks), so they were certainly very interested in the diaper deal. So the three of us hopped in the car and started hitting Walgreens stores for diapers. We made three stops and all three were successful for all three of us. No issues except at our second stop where the manager kept telling the other cashier on duty she could do the transaction for us but “after these no more”. They ended up with 50 packs between the two of them, and I came away with an additional 30 packs. We probably would have tried another stop, but we ran out of room to put the diapers in my Honda Accord.

We returned to my house where we unloaded my loot into the house and theirs into their car. We still had more coupons, so when my wife and I went out for the evening leaving the twins with the brother-in-law and his wife we made a quick stop by Walgreens to try the deal one last time. We were both successful in getting ten packs each, so add another 20 packs to our total. As a side note, the brother-in-law and his wife also hit another location on the way home after we returned from our night out and added another 9 packs of diapers to the total to end at 59 packs of diapers and 11 packs of wipes purchased as filler.

So in yesterday’s hits between my wife and I we spent another $0.07 out of pocket and came away with another 50 packs of diapers, along with another 50 Dove dark chocolate bars and $25 in register rewards coupons. Additionally, the Dove bars were enough to earn us another 5 free movie tickets through the deal on the EasySaver rebate this month. So new grand totals:

• The Loot
  • 89 packs of Premium diapers and 48 packs of Premium training pants, relatively evenly divided between diaper sizes 3 to 6 and training pant sizes 2T/3T and 3T/4T.
  • 78 bars of Dove dark chocolate (my wife loves the stuff)
  • 2 Walgreens water filter cartridges (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 3 Vacuum storage bags (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 pack of Crayola Markers (July EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 pack of G2 pens (July EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 bottle Pert Plus (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 pack of Walgreens light bulbs (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 18 folders, 6 highlighters, 4 packs of mechanical pencils and 2 mini composition books (5cent items used as fillers)
  • 1 2-liter of Diet Coke
• The rewards
  • $48.01 in EasySaver rebates (between two accounts and including the 10% bonus for requesting a gift card), plus eight movie tickets through the August Mars EasySaver rebate offer
  • $80.00 in Register rewards
• Out of pocket expense
• $1.25 total, paid using gift cards from previous Walgreens rebates

I will report that we have now been using these diapers for about a day now and have been very impressed with the quality. My daughter is having no problems with the premium size 3 diapers and my son hasn’t had any leaks or issues in the regular size 4 diapers (this was our lone pack of regular since they had nothing else left at one of my stops yesterday). Needless to say I am very happy with the Walgreens diapers, especially since they paid me to take them. =)

Sorry, no updated trophy picture of the diaper pile. The pile collapsed on us as we brought in the new packs, and we didn’t feel like restacking them. However, once we figure out where we are permanently storing all of these diapers I may post an updated picture.

Net selling prices for Huggies diapers, Pull-Ups training pants, Cottonelle and Scott athroom [sic] tissue, Viva towels and Kleenex facial tissue, will increase on average between 6 and 8 percent, with implementation timing ranging from July 20, 2008 to August 31, 2008. The price changes vary by brand and in some cases by package count.

Yet another reason why it is so important to be a smart shopper. Know the prices of the products you use regularly and when you find a really good deal stock up on as much as you would reasonably need. Makes me glad I have about 15 packs of diapers sitting in my kids’ closet right now.

On a related note, you can get a small price break on the Huggies with this mail-in rebate, good for $5 back on purchases of 3 packs on a single receipt through 6/15/2008.

American Telecom (ATS): This is one that I let go on for way too long. I am owed two rebates totaling $30 for a cordless phone package I purchased from Office Depot on Black Friday 2006. I contacted the company initially in March 2007 and was told I needed to activate a prepaid calling card or some other gimmick in the box. I had already done this, but fine, I called and “reactivated” the card and contacted them again to let them know it had been done.

Fast forward to September 2007 - I still didn’t have my money, so I try calling the customer service number on the rebate forms. It’s been disconnected! I then look up the manufacturer online and send an email to their customer service. I get a note back a couple of days later stating that they no longer use the original rebate processor and were now fulfilling those rebates from their corporate office. I was assured that my information would be forwarded to the appropriate department and I would be paid.

Well, it is now late February 2008 and I still don’t have my money. The next logical step for me is to file a BBB complaint, which I did this morning. If that doesn’t work, on to the AG’s office it will be.

Buy.com/M2 Processing: I should have known there would be an issue with this since Buy.com was involved (see the Connect3D fiasco, which has still not been resolved). To use the pitiful $10 gift certificate they issued me for complaining about the Connect3D rebates they screwed me on, I purchased a little tool set that was $10 with free shipping. During the checkout, they had an offer for a free magazine subscription or $10 rebate to be fulfilled by M2 Processing as a thank you for making a purchase. I don’t need any more magazines lying around my house, so I opted for the rebate and sent in my form and documentation. This was in late October, and as of this date I still don’t have my money.

There is no contact information on the rebate form, but thanks to the fine folks in the forums over at SD I was able to find email addresses for M2 Processing, and I still had the email for buy.com from the Connect3D fiasco. I sent off an email demanding payment within 14 days. I just sent the email so no response yet. For anyone else waiting for this rebate, here are the email addresses I used:

• hordway@m2mags.com
• service@m2mediagroup.com
• support@customerservice.buy.com

Atdec: This one was from a free after rebate flat screen TV mount I bought from MacMall.com last October. I actually bought both a flush mount and a tilt mount (different rebates, but both free) and received my rebate for the flush mount but not for the tilt mount. I called the customer service number after I found on their website no record of my submission and they took my submission info over the phone. They said it would be 6-8 weeks before I get my check, but at this point I am optimistic. The rep I talked to was probably one of the nicest I’ve ever dealt with at a rebate center.

I still have some of the diabetes monitor rebates to follow-up on, but since I have some that are overdue and others that aren’t due yet I will hold off so I can take care of all of those at once. And so the waiting game continues…