I despise Mail-In rebates

I hate mail-in rebates. Let's get that out of the way right up front.

However, if the deal is good enough, I've been known to put up with the hassles of the MIR to get a few bucks off when buying tech items.

I've been looking for a good deal on a 1TB external hard drive for a while, so when I saw the following deal for a 1TB external drive for $90 after rebate, it caught my attention.

However, when you view the rebate form needed to get the $50 MIR, the chance of actually receiving the $50 seems to be slightly less than a snowballs chance in hell.

Check out the crazy hoops that you must jump through to get your rebate.

1) You must visit the rebate website and register your rebate to get a Claim ID
2) You must write down the Claim ID on the envelope (the claim ID isn't even on the rebate form)
3) You must mail in the rebate form (filled out in ALL CAPS) by 10/30/08.

(The purchase requirements are 9/12/08 - 9/30/08, so if you buy the drive on 9/30/08, you have 1 month to receive your item, decide you're going to keep it, and get to this step in the rebate process.)

4) You must wait until 12/11/08 and then you have a one month window (12/11/08 - 1/9/08) to go back to the rebate website and "verify" your information.

(According to the form, "In order for the money to be sent, you must check the status online to assure the information is valid.")

5) Then you must "allow 8 weeks from the postmark deadline date to receive your rebate"

(If you're thinking that 8 weeks after the postmark deadline date is during the one month online verification window, you would be correct...12/25/08)

If this all doesn't sound sketchy enough for you, if you read the bottom of the rebate form, it says "By submitting this rebate, the customer has read the rebate rules, requirements in this form and on www.mir411.com/policy.aspx and agrees to abide by them."

So you're supposed to follow all directions on this form, AND visit that website to see if there are any other requirements!

If you visit that site, it's pretty much the same rules as listed on the rebate form except for one little gem: "The rebate will be void if the rebate form was not signed."

So even if you followed the steps on the rebate form exactly: recorded your claim ID on the envelope, filled out the form in all caps, mailed the form quick enough, marked your calendar to verify the information online, and then waited some unknown amount of time for your check to come...your rebate money probably STILL won't come because you never signed the rebate form!!! And why didn't you sign the rebate form? Because nowhere on the rebate form is there a signature line!

Have I mentioned that I hate mail-in rebates?

Letterman vs. McCain

John McCain was supposed to be a guest on the Late Show yesterday, but bailed on Letterman at the last minute so that he could return to Washington to address the economic "crater" that America is facing.

As you can see, Letterman was not very happy with this:



What made the situation more interesting was that McCain then showed up on the CBS evening news being interviewed by Katie Couric in the middle of the Late Show taping.

There is now some speculation that the reason that McCain canceled on Letterman to appear on Couric's show was that the CBS Evening News was supposed to be airing an interview that Sarah Palin had given to Couric. In the interview, as with the other two interviews that she's done since being named VP nominee, she made a complete fool out of herself. So, it is speculated, McCain dropped in on Couric's show at the last minute so that they would have to air an interview with him instead of Palin.

Watch the clips of Palin's interview with Couric and see if you'd let her in front of a nationwide tv audience:

Lots of People Could Use a Cash Infusion

"Lots of People Could Use a Cash Infusion"

If average Americans acted like Wall Street . . .

Slacker Uprising

Michael Moore has released his new documentary covering his failed attempt to unseat President Bush in 2004.

Watch it below:

Or watch it here or download a copy.

7 Years later

In memory of 9/11/01, here is a link to the 9/11/01 web archive. This was a collaboration between the Wayback Machine at archive.org and the Library of Congress.

You can browse the web pages that were covering the 9/11 attacks as they looked in the days, weeks, and months after 9/11/01.

Cleveland Area Discount Offers

Stephanie recently discovered that numerous Cleveland area radio & tv stations were offering discount gift certificate offers via their websites.

After seeing Stephanie check numerous sites for new discount offers, I figured I could write a web page that would automatically check & consolidate all of the discount sites for her. (It helped that the stations all use the same 3rd party for their discount pages).

So, after a couple hours, my discount page was born. They usually have some decent offers, and they put new offers up every week.

Note: the discount page will take a few seconds to load, since in the background it's actually downloading data from numerous web sites.

Hallelujah, the pod is gone!

Apparently the court system scared my crazy neighbor into cleaning up and getting rid of the pod prior to her 9/3 sentencing. For the first time all summer I can actually look down the street without that eyesore!