Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Once More Round the Carousel: the Circuit City Rebate Game Continues!

Well, I got an email from the people at Parago about my elusive Circuit City rebate (discussed earlier here and here). This is Parago, the company that responded to my initial inquiry, then ignored me for a while, told me I had to write to Circuit City... which I did, and promptly got a response from Parago!

They informed me that they needed a ticket number and a program number to help me. Of course, both of those pieces of information were in the very email to which they were responding. As well as an earlier one from February.

I provided them (again) to "Eddy," who I suspect is a chunk of code in an auto-response system.

You know, I don't like to think I'm cynical, but this kind of nonsense makes me ever more sure that the "customer service" process which Parago provides to Circuit City is primarily designed to exhaust consumers so that they will just give up. ("Let's just keep asking them for the same information they've already given us until they go away!")

Which, of course, brings out the Irish in me and makes me determined to see it through. See you in hell, Parago!

Besides, I got a little thrill today when I drove past Circuit City's store on the West Loop to buy a new router from one of their competitors. (Several models had rebates. I did not choose any of them. Sorry, D-Link, that's how you lost my business today, although you seemed to be offering exactly what I bought for $10 cheaper - after hoop-jumping.)

(Update: I wrote to Parago's PR person asking her if they'd like to comment on any of this, and threw out some general questions about rebates - not just about my experience with them. I really hope she responds.)

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