I’ve just encountered a new (at least for me) scam in the ongoing quest by retailers and manufacturers to make rebates more and more onerous to apply for and therefore less likely to cost them any money.
While applying on-line for a $10 rebate on an ASUS motherboard I purchased recently at Micro Center, I was offered the following:
As you can see, the “No-Wait-Rebate service” checkbox was selected by default.
Let’s do the math here… I’m being offered the opportunity to get $10 seven weeks sooner for a fee of $1, i.e., 10% of the rebate. Annualizing from seven weeks to a year yields an APR of 74%.
Does this seem like a “small fee” to you?
It really is unbelievable. What kind of idiot would fall for this scam?
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