I hate mail in rebates!

I hate mail in rebates.  In my opinion, they're little more than a scam to make products look cheaper than they actually are.  The manufacturers know that a certain percentage of customers will never mail in their rebate form, or mail it in too late, thus saving them money over the item being sold with a regular sale price.  Mail in rebates also allow companies to inflate their sales figures towards the end of a fiscal year, by deferring the rebate payouts to the following year.

I bring this up because I recently received a mail in rebate for an Epson R2880 printer that I purchased last November:



Note that I said "purchased last November".  It's now the middle of March and this just arrived.  Almost four full months later.  Good god, that's... slow.  I had pretty much forgotten I was even owed this money.  It's like monopoly money at this point.

Fortunately, the printer is fantastic, so I really can't complain too much. 

Hey, maybe I'll spend that rebate check on some paper!