You people are sometimes very helpful. Not long ago, I mentioned here that I'd bought a Blackberry. A total stranger — I don't even know his or her name, only a handle — wrote and told me the following…
If you bought it through A.T.& T., you probably want to take advantage of their rebate offer. I work in rebate fulfillment for a sister company and I should warn you about a trick. They don't do this with everyone but they do it with some people. The rebate offer requires that you send in the bar code on the box that your Blackberry came in. A certain amount of rebate applications get returned with a form letter that says you did not include the bar code even though you did. By the time they get this letter, a lot of people have already thrown away the box and they no longer have a copy of the bar code to send it. So save a copy of the bar code until you receive the rebate.
I didn't think it would be necessary but because of the e-mail, I saved a copy of the bar code. Guess what I got in the mail today…
We thank you for your interest in the A.T.& T. Los Angeles/Bakersfield VISA Rebate offer. We regret that we are unable to process because your request did not meet the following requirements:
No IMEI bar-code was submitted. Please submit an original or copy of the IMEI bar-code. The bar-code is located on the end of the wireless device box or can be found on the back of the wireless device by removing the battery.
If I hadn't saved the copy, I wouldn't be completely outta luck since I could open the device and take out the battery…and I'm not sure how the code inside would copy. But they sure don't make it easy to get your rebate, do they? Now, I just have to allow another ten weeks for processing.
Thanks to whoever sent me that good advice.