So my suggestion in this situation would be to wait until the standard six to eight weeks have passed and call the 800 number on the form inquiring about the status of your rebate. When they tell you that they don’t have it in their system, say that you sent it in and have copies of all of your submission materials. At this point they will probably give you a fax number or PO Box to “resend” your submission. Just send it to wherever they tell you and you’re golden!

Some people may disagree with this, but as often as these rebate companies lose submissions and wrongfully deny claims, it is just fighting fire with fire in my book. You made the required purchase, so you should be able to claim your rebate.

You agreed to play the rebate game when you bought the product and submitted the rebate information. Do I think this is a big deal? Not really. But I think there is no “gray area” in the situation you describe.

I did something similar but slightly different once with hard disk drives. Retailer X is selling a hard drive for $200 with a $100 manufacturer’s rebate and has a company price match policy. Retailer Y is selling the same drive for $100 flat out (but possibly keeping the equivalent of the rebate themselves).

What I did was purchase three hard drives from Retailer X and Retailer Y for $900 total. The three of the drives where then returned (new & unopened) to Retailer Y (refund of $300). Next, I waited a few weeks until the current rebate promotion was over (but within the price match period) and went back to Retailer X, but this time I requested a price match using my receipt from Retailer Y to get the drives for the same $100 each I paid at the other store (refund of $300). Finally I submitted the original $200 per hard drive receipt from X for the manufacturer’s rebate to get the last $300 purchase price back. All said and done I got three 200 gig hard drives and paid only the sales tax of about $30.

In a way, Retailer X goofed up and was willing to price match a product even though it had a rebate a few weeks ago, but the clerk did it without hesitation. They may have lost some money but that’s the price they pay for having evil rebates and a price match policy (and clueless clerks).

I wish you luck trying to guess which nationwide big box stores these were. I’ve heard that this type of thing is possible pretty regularly if you keep an eye out. The way I got the idea was from a college roommate who heard about it from an online bargain website.