AT&T doesn't want to give you a full rebate

AT&T (formerly Cingular). This is quite troublesome. We want to like these cell carriers, but when we keep hearing about shady business practices, well, we just can’t help but point them out. Maybe you can chalk it up to the transitioning from Cingular to AT&T, but that’s just a name change. We’re really wondering what AT&T is up to. Anyway, the Shreveport Times has a piece today about a woman who just signed up for a new contract with AT&T (though she says Cingular, we know what she means). She got two phones — one for her and one for her son — that cost $50 each, and received a $100 mail-in rebate. “So that’s like getting two free phones,” says the salesman. This isn’t uncommon for new subscribers who choose inexpensive phones. Normally, you can get a $50 phone for free with a new contract (though perhaps the $50 price she speaks of factors in the new-contract discount). However, upon reading the fine print, this customer found that she’d be getting a rebate card, not a rebate check. “I had already bought the phones so why would I need a card? There wasn’t anything else I needed and I didn’t want to accessorize,” she says. Upon phoning her local Cingular dealer, the representative explained that it’s a VISA rebate card, so you can use it anywhere you can use a credit card. So this appears like a fair deal, right? Not really. This comes from a friend of ours, who works at a major retail store: “The problem with the credit card/gift cards is that if you don’t know your balance, it’s a pain. We can’t check the balance at the register, so it becomes a guessing game. First we try it for the amount the customer thinks is left. Usually, that is denied. So we keep subtracting a dollar until it is approved. At that point, I let the customer know that there is less than a dollar left on the card, and they usually instruct me to throw it away.” Those fractions of a dollar can add up pretty fast, saving AT&T bucks in the long run. If they had mailed an actual refund check, they’d be taken for the entire refund amount. But for every $50,000 they hand out in rebate cards (that’s 1,000 cards if they’re all $50 rebates), they’re probably only on the hook for $49,500, assuming an average of 50 cents unused per card. And something tells us that they issue more than 1,000 rebates per month. [The Shreveport Times]]]>