Has anyone done "rebats" to earn extra money? Is this on the up & up?


How about 'REFUNDS'??

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2008 09:03PM by msvjb.

Anything you have to pay for I say "no it's not on the up and up". If Home Depot wants you to do rebates for them go to the office and apply for the job. Let them pay you not the other way around.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2008 12:40PM by billienicolosi.

I think s/he means rebates.

ms is talking about the "spam" rebate jobs I get in my email everyday. Rebates from Home Depot or Lowes. You pay a fee and they are supposed to "hook" you up with what ever business is in need of "rebate processors"
We do a lot of shopping at Home Depot and Lowes and have never been offerred a rebate..

It's a Scam!

Lowes runs $5-20 rebates on their captive paint brand every 3 day holiday weekend. I usually buy my paint during those times. I believe Home Depot may do the same. Similarly a number of places run a rebate on the delivery cost for a major appliance which I believe is store specific rather than manufacturer but I certainly could be wrong.

As for processing these types of rebates, they all seem to be run out of a series of post office boxes depending on the rebate. These are usually in Young America, MN and El Paso, TX if I recall correctly, and I can not fathom why the outfits that do them would ever farm out the responsibility for them. Customers who do rebates are too twitchy about them being done right in the 6-8 weeks it takes to get your check. I will admit that there are several products I will buy on clearance but not on rebates because they handled my rebate sooo poorly.

Come to think of it major appliances, depending on the brand have rebates but ours have always been in the form of "Savings bonds".
I didn't know about the Lowes paint rebates.

Me too I like "clearance" rather than rebate. (unless it's an instant rebate) And I like "senior citizen days" at many of the department stores and grocery stores. Just wish "senior citizen day" would be the same day for all of the stores instead of scattered out through the week. Each store having a different day. Maybe it will come to having the same day with the gas prices going up neary every day.

I get offers everyday in my spam folder to process rebates from home for Home Depot. Seems to be only Home Depot. But I ain't goin' fer it!!! LOL!!

There are also ones for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which are mortgage related. And indeed a few years ago it was found that many mortgages were requiring mortgage insurance be kept in place even when the mortgage had dropped below the debt to equity ratio where it was required. After a little flurry of accusations and "Oops! Our oversight!" there were some rebates of the additional fees paid that were not legal to collect. Similarly on a whole bunch of refi mortgages a fee of $250 was collected for "an appraisal" which was never done--I think Countrywide was the big culprit on this one. Those fees were returned to the borrower. I believe in both cases these were done under court supervision and I doubt seriously that either back of "rebate" items would have been farmed out to unknown independent contractors to be done and were, in fact, probably done by the law firms as "billable clerical hours".

I remember that going on with mortages. Big hul-la-booo!

Not long ago I had a mail come saying they wanted to refund my auto life insurance through a loan company, since I had paid my car off several years before it was due. They wanted a lot of information. The only problem I saw was I didn't have auto life insurance to pay off my car in case of disability or death. Now what was that all about? LOL!!

Anyway, it was filed in basket #13

Yes, it makes sense to read that stuff carefully. For several years I have been receiving "Last Chance" offers to renew warranties for "as low as . . ." that ran out years ago and cost more for the first extended warranty when the equipment was new. I haven't bothered following up on these things so they have been "round filed" with the rest of the junk mail.

I get those all the time too. And another thing I've learned through the years is to not let them sell me an extended warranty on anything. The warranties cost more than the product most of the time. (smile)

Most cars these days have enough warranty to start with. By the time you drive out the warranty it's time to get another car.

And large items like computers, refrigerators have warranties that will cover for an extended period too.

Way I figure it if the item I have bought has a good warranty to begin with why waste my money on an extended warranty or for the Dog Patrol to come fix my computer.
They just try to get money out of ya no matter what the reason.

And then these computer places want to set up your computer for a pretty size-able sum. Gee Whiz I can do that myself. Have a friend who just recently purchased a new computer. The original cost was around $500 and by the time he let them install and get everything set up for him it was $1000.

There are some warranties that we have found quite worthwhile. We bought a used car that still had some original warranty left and extended it. Cost of about $600. Before the warranty ran out there had been over $5,000 in covered repairs because the previous owner had not tended to maintenance.

I purchased one on my flat top stove and have renewed it every two years since then because about every 18 months it blows one particular burner and runs around $145-$160 to get somebody out to replace it (and when I checked there was not a secondary market burner to replace it though at this point I have watched it replaced enough times I could readily do it if I could get the part).

The extended warranty on the large flat screen TV was used to replace it in its 14th month (came with a 1 year warranty) because they couldn't get parts. Not only was the TV replaced with newer and better technology, the price difference between the old one and the new one was reimbursed, which more than covered the cost of the original warranty and a warranty on the new one. The price of course had dropped as the technology got better and cheaper.

I've a flat top stove and Love it. We've had it for 8 years and have had no problems. Course the way things go, everything will go at the same time.

I can see an extended warranty on a used car. I haven't bought a used car in years. I think I was in college when I bought my last used car. By the time I got rid of it the thing was nearly dead.

It is the luck of the draw on appliances. Consumer Reports can not give you a reasonable notion about current models when the problems occur 18 to 24 months out and the current models will be off the market in 12 months. My model flat top just has a quirk.

My dishwasher has a quirk in its circuit board. It burns out a particular connection that moves it from the rinse cycle to the dry cycle on 2 of the wash types. A new circuit board has the same problem, so what they suggest is solder and resolder the connection when it burns out because a new board is about 50% of the price of the machine and the design flaw has not been fixed--they redesigned the entire board for the next model and it is not backwards compatible. No extended warranty was purchased. The first repair was $175 and it went again within the 90 day repair warranty so was resoldered again. It took a little over a year to blow again. Rather than repair, I just manually end the cycle (or the dishwasher will run 24/7).

The more electronics in a gizmo, the harder it is to test and repair. The more electronic the gizmo is, the more I am likely to get the extended warranty. Computers are the exception because I know I can order boards and chips and stuff on line or wander over to the computer store for parts and mostly fix it myself. Plus computers are outdated generally before they have hardware problems (if they make it through the initial 30-60 days ok), so when a machine starts having hardware problems (other than a hard drive crash) it is probably time to think new machine anyway.

Our refrigerator/freezer, side by side is terrible. We've had it for 8years is the only major appliance we have that's causing problems. It's a Maytag and who knew?
This was our first side by side refrigerator and we'll never have another. It's had to be repaired so many times it's not worth another repair. Soon as it conks again it's a new refrigerator/freezer but it will definatly be an over and under.

I just bought a new desktop tower only. My old one just went BONK last Saturday. Got a great deal at Circuit City.

My husband is a gadget guru and can fix anything (except the refrigerator) and set up anything.

I had endless troubles with a Maytag refrigerator years ago. I happily left it with the house I sold having specificaly excluded it and other appliances from the listing and when they were included by the buyer in the negotiations, they were on an "as is/where is" basis, so the ice maker not working properly and the finicky temperature controls on the refrigerator were not an issue. On the other hand I bought a house with a probably 20 year old Maytag washer that was probably the best washer I ever owned.

My flat top stove is a Maytag and never an ounce of problems. The refrig must be a lemon and I'll be happy to part with it as soon as possible.

I have a Maytag washer too and love it!! The way it agitates is remarkable. Had it for over 8 years and she's still going strong. Best washer I have ever had. My dryer is Maytag too. Great multilevel heating dryer.