Dot Com Note

I like Jonathan’s My Money Blog. This guy is honest, down to earth, and he is full of practical ideas. He has opened up his financial life to his website visitors and he preaches ideas that he practices to save and make money. His famous series is how to make money using your credit cards.

Today in my RSS reader I saw his post about money back rebates and how a San Jose Mercury Reporter had dug out 1,300 unopened rebate forms from a dumpster. You can read the full story here.

I also hate rebates. I am glad that BestBuy is offering more instant savings and has moved away from their infamous rebates. Other electronics and office supply retailers are slowly following BestBuy’s direction. I have never received any money from my rebates. I will either forget to submit it before the due date or forget to follow up after their ridiculous six to eight weeks waiting period.

If the retialers are sincere about honoring rebates, they will move to a complete online version for redeeming rebates. Staples offers electronic filing and tracking of rebates but I don’t know their turn around time.

Hey, this is an excellent startup idea. Develop a rebate redemption application, pitch it to a few angel investors, and work with retailers by offering two weeks turn around time for cash back to the customers.

I am sure somebody has thought about this idea before but retialers are not interested in redeeming a large percentage of rebates. The unique selling point of a rebate clearing house is how low its rebate redemption rate is.