The word “rebate” invokes a variety of primal emotions, including fear, anger, hunger, and an itchy ancient cortex.  It can also lead to a number of physical ailments including hair loss, old age, arthritis, paper cuts, and sometimes even lockjaw.  While the cure may be many years away, support groups may be able to help.  If you know of any, let me know.

I think that many consumers will buy a product over another similar one because of a rebate offer.  Even consumers that have been burned by the rebate system before will repeat their behavior, hoping that this time they will win the lottery.  They think that maybe there have been enough complaints by consumer groups since their last rebate attempt that it will be a smoother process now.  I have received a rebate before, but it did require a few phone calls, emails, and general fuss to get it.

For me, there may be a certain monetary threshold to cross which forces me to take action like many others.  I no longer buy products just because they have a small rebate attached to them.  I know that it is not worth my time or aggravation.  The sad part is that I am still slightly aggravated because I know that the business marketing teams are winning.  Instead of playing the rebate game to save money, I think I will start a coupon collection.  Just by themselves they are worth something like 1/1000 of a cent.

My most recent rebate redemption attempt starts at Staples.  I purchased a wireless USB Ethernet adapter for my laptop and gathered all of the required rebate paperwork.  Now, at this point, I was not sure if I was going to go through the trouble of filling everything out and sending it in.  However, they now have this new rebate submission process code-named Staples Easy Rebates where you can submit for rebates online with no paperwork or UPC required for mail in.  The submission process was very easy, except for the fact that it took three attempts to enter my information.  After my submission I received this prompt email notice:

Thursday, March 31, 2005 2:25 PM
Subject: We got it. And soon you will get it back.
Thank you for submitting your rebate request(s) through Staples Easy Rebates.
We have received rebate information for the following product(s):
   NETGEAR 54MBPS USB 2.0 ADAPTER
   We will begin processing your request(s) shortly.

Much to my surprise I received this email next:

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 6:42 PM
Subject: The check is in the mail! (Really.)
Thank you for submitting your rebate request(s) through Staples Easy Rebates.
We have processed your rebate information for the following product(s):
   NETGEAR WG111 54 MBPS WIRELESS USB ADAPTER
We have mailed out your rebate, so check your mailbox!  You should receive it shortly. 
Thank you again for shopping Staples and for using Easy Rebates!

They must have some very excitable people writing their automated emails!  I especially like the way they worded their subject line in their last email to me.  Unfortunately, I have not received the rebate check that is currently circulating in the mail system, desperately seeking to get to Washington, hoping dearly to find Redmond, itching to locate my street, and we will see if it ever arrives in my mailbox.

5/10/2005 9:56:05 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)        Indiscriminate Complaints

In case you are unaware, Skype is an Internet telephony (VOIP) application that provides free voice communication, chat, and file transfer capabilities in an easy to use, cross-platform package.  For fee, Skype allows users to call regular phone numbers and allows regular phones to call into Skype.

The popularity of Skype has grown rapidly over the past two years since its introduction for a number of reasons.  Although I do not plan to go into many technical details here, I will say that Skype is a well engineered piece of networking magic.  It takes full advantage of modern decentralized peer-to-peer technology to deliver end-users a highly responsive system for communication.  The user interface is very simple to use and Skype is well known for simply working out of the box with very little configuration.

Skype released an API for the Windows platform at the end of 2004.  This alone sets it apart from a lot of the other big players like MSN and AOL.  As a developer, having an API available with this much power is an exciting thing.  If you are interested in taking a look, check out http://www.skype.com/community/devzone and look for the documentation and example code.

There are a number of third-party applications and utilities that have been developed for Skype.  You can check some of them out at http://www.skype.com/community/devzone/doc.html.  Skype also recently announced a contest for developers and they are calling for utilities, development tools, and other applications to help showcase their product.  After taking a look at their example C++ code I can see why they need some help with developer tools.  Here is a link to the competition.   http://www.skype.com/community/devzone/apicomp.html.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

4/30/2005 12:05:07 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)        Compelling News