Today in my newspaper there is an article titled “Do the Paperwork and Get Your Rebate Money”.
The article goes on to tell folks ‘How to get your rebate’. Follow all the instructions, make copies, yadda yadda yadda. It also tells you what to do if you never receive the rebate. (Better mark this one for a follow-up!)
I have much better advice! Just don’t buy anything that has a rebate! Just look what you will gain by following this advice. A huge time saving consisting of the following items. Unless you need it today, sooner or later someone will put it on sale without a rebate.
No trying to read the tiny print telling you what to send.
No cutting out all the tiny UPC codes, locating serial numbers, etc.
No having to make sure you beat the deadlines for sending all the required stuff.
No making copies and filing them away because you will undoubtedly need them later.
No checking the mail in vain looking for a rebate check.
No making calls (if you can find a phone number) to find out what happened to your rebate.
No getting denied your rebate because of a ‘mistake’ in what you sent. (One rebate center tried to tell me I mailed it too late. I mailed it the day I bought it! Eventually I did get the $$, but only after many calls and threats!)
No writing letters of complaint to the Attorney General of your state or anyone else you can think to write, because you didn’t get what was promised.
Rebates have to be the best consumer rip-off ever conceived. They are legal (shouldn’t be) ways to make consumers think they are getting a good deal and the sad thing is the fact that consumers have to jump through too many hoops to (maybe) get what was promised.
Whatever happened to just putting something on sale? If people would just boycott those rebate promises, pretty soon they would go away and save consumers a lot of grief!
I’m still reading the paper. Where else would I get such good material to write about?
Martha
I am appalled! It’s no wonder school kids think it’s OK to go out dressed like they are going to a ragbag party! Their moms go out wearing their pajamas!
A front page spread in a section of today’s paper showed how moms can leave the house in their sleepy-time clothes looking stylish! The title of the article was ‘The Slipper Club’.
Please tell me moms don’t really do this! Since all of the pictures of the ‘cutesy’ dressed moms in their jammies gave information on where to buy all of the so-called outfits, I thought maybe the merchants in the article were behind all of this drivel. But I am afraid that wasn’t the case.
The article started with the reason why moms don’t dress before they leave the house to take the kids (I hope the kids are dressed!) to school. The poor mommies don’t have time to dress!
Now if this isn’t the worst reason why moms don’t dress in the morning, I have yet to hear it. Don’t have time? Then get up just five minutes earlier. I am not suggesting they have to put on makeup, panty hose (I bet they don’t wear panty hose anywhere!) or dress like they are going to the opera, but how long does it take to put on jeans and a blouse?
Most children learn from their parents more than any other way. What they learn, good or bad, depends on what examples are set before them. Not taking the time to dress properly before leaving the house certainly is not the way to set an example for kids. I wonder how a mom would feel if she was involved in traffic accident and the police talked to her in her jammies? I would hope she would be so embarrassed she would never leave the house again unless she was properly dressed.
Perhaps the schools should also publish a list of what moms should wear while delivering their kids to school. Maybe then the kids wouldn’t need to be told they can’t wear pajamas to school. This was one of the items on the list of ‘not allowed’.
I really have to stop reading the paper!
Martha
I’m afraid! I think this is a sign of the times, and it ‘ain’t’ good!
This week in the Sunday paper there was a big article about going back to school and the article included the School Dress Code.
There was a list of what is acceptable and another list of what is unacceptable. By the time I had read that list; I was fuming! Good grief, what are parents thinking of? If I had a school age child, he/she wouldn’t even own some of the things on the unacceptable list!
Schools shouldn’t have to be responsible for what kids are wearing to school! This is what parents should be doing! Parents should make sure their daughters don’t look like they are going out to work on street corners. They should make sure their sons wear pants with belts so the bare parts of their lower anatomy aren’t showing.
I can’t imagine what parents who try to do the right things must be going through these days. There seem to be a lot of kids whose parents give in, don’t care or otherwise are not involved with how their off-spring appear in public. I can just imagine the fights and arguments that parents who don’t give in, who do care and are totally involved with how their off-spring appear in public, have with sons and daughters.
I looked at some of the store circulars in the Sunday paper as well. Oh my heavens! If I had a daughter I wouldn’t want her to see that crap that passes for fashion! Those teen-age models look like trollups!
Again, parents are responsible for the stores sell. If parents wouldn’t buy that tacky, revealing and otherwise awful stuff, the stores would not have it for sale.
I think I must have been born 40 years too soon and I also think I may have to quit reading the paper, my blood pressure may not take it.
Martha