Those who are lured by an attractive "after rebate" price on the Internet don't just have to worry about whether the check will actually arrive. One reader recently discovered that what looked like a nice deal from NewEgg on an MP3 player would actually cost him more money if he wanted the rebate.
"My girlfriend ordered an IRiver H10 MP3 player for me from NewEgg as she thought it was a great deal with the $100 mail-in rebate," the reader wrote. "But what wasn't even hinted on the NewEgg order page was that to get the rebate you would also have to purchase a year's subscription to a music service at a cost of $180. So for NewEgg to advertise an after-rebate price of $125 was a little misleading."
Or a lot misleading, actually. After the reader wrote me last week, I checked the NewEgg website and the rebate offer that had fooled his girlfriend was still there. (When I checked again on June 12th, it was gone, replaced by a $20 IRiver rebate.) The "iRiver Blue 5GB USB2.0 Audio Jukebox MP3 Player Model H10BLUE" was listed at an after-rebate price of $125 -- $225 minus the $100 mail-in rebate. Only by clicking on a link to the rebate form -- which was actually from RealNetworks -- could one eventually discover that after paying $225 to NewEgg, you also had to pay Real $178.95 for a Rhapsody to Go subscription in order to claim the rebate.
The reader wrote to NewEgg to complain about the way they described the offer, pointing out that the iRiver/Rhapsody rebate was available no matter where one bought the IRiver MP3 player. "I got curious as to how other web retailers were promoting the rebate," the reader wrote. "What I found was that either the rebate was not mentioned or, when it was, it was clearly stated next to the price that you had to purchase an annual subscription to Rhapsody To Go. My issue boils down to what I think is deceptive advertising by NewEgg to push a product." Almost a week after he'd written to them, he finally got what appeared to be a form response from NewEgg telling him that rebate policies were up to the manufacturers.
That response left the reader all the more frustrated. "My point was that the average person coming across NewEgg's order page wood think, like my girlfriend, that purchasing the H10 entitles you to the rebate," the reader wrote. "Not pay this, and then this, and only then do you get the rebate. Other sites don't seem to have a problem making this clear, so I'm very disappointed that NewEgg doesn't seem to understand that they need to look at their business ethics."
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