A brief overview of technology rebate experiences

So recently I built two very similar PC's for my own personal research.  As part of the cost savings process, I bought multiple components with mail-in rebates (MiR's).  This is a record of my experience.

Let's start with the good.  My first check already came in from XFX.  Yay!

My order for this part was placed September 4, 2011 and the check is dated October 7.  If I recall correctly it couldn't have arrived later than the 15th.   That means a maximum gap of just 6 weeks between these dates and I'm slow to mail this stuff!  Please also note that XFX mails actual checks and not just those shitty prepaid cards from AmEx.  They also don't hold your check hostage like a certain other company I'm about to mention...

OCZ offers their customers 6-8 week shipping for their AmEx cards... OR customers could just forfeit $2-3 of the value and receive it in 5-8 business days!  :)  Yeah.  Right.

Notice something?  Yes, I might have taken a week to get my documentation mailed.  That's not what I meant!  There's a 3 week and 5 day gap between OCZ receiving my documentation and going into "Reward Card processing."  The funny part?  XFX and OCZ's rebates use the same URL.  Hmmm...  I'd like to know whether OCZ pays for these added "features" or if XFX pays for speedy processing.

Of course since OCZ also owns PC Power & Cooling the rebates are just as wonderful a process:

Gee, thanks for continuing to hold onto my cash for me OCZ!  UPDATE:  And just like that, I received my first OCZ rebate the very next day after posting this.

Then there's Corsair... Yep, I was REALLY getting around with those rebates.  I'm such an avaricious whore.

Seeing as today is October 30, 2011 I'm rather surprised by how much this sucks.  Notably the Corsair site never leads you to an OCZ logo the way the XFX site does.  That is, Corsair uses a different rebate processor than both OCZ and XFX.  The acknowedged receiving the documentation on October 11 but have to do anything with it.  Shit's like watching grass grow (but at least I can smoke that!).

Of course for all the problems the above suppliers might or might not have with the rebate process, no one can compete with Xigmatek...

(click for full size)

That's right.  I've not received a check, an email, there's no website... Yep, I'm in the woods here :)  I'm lucky I remembered that I sent this one in!  FUN FACT:  For a while at least (I've not looked at my rebate form) there was a personal email address to check with for updates on a rebate.  Mmmmm, efficiency!

Anyway that's all I got for now folks but I hope you enjoyed the ride and appreciated my research.

BONUS TIME!!!

I bought that product on September 23.  They still have a couple weeks to beat their record!  :)

The fail of Google

When I was browsing for houses in Nicaragua online it kept offering to translate the pages via a toolbar at the top of Chrome's rendering.  It's actually kind of annoying so I decided to read the "About Google Translate" section under the Options button and boy was I surprised.  Here's the link if supplied.

https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=173424&hl=en-US

Here's what the page looks like to me today:

For a company that's supposed to be exceptionally expert at helping me find information their "help" site certainly isn't helpful.  There's not even an immediately available way to report a dead link!  Web design 101 FAIL.  Congratulations Google.  You aren't even good at what you're good at anymore.