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A “Gift” from Sears

Lenten thanks, Day 29

A gray morning; a soft soaking rain falls from the sky. Blossoming plants shiver with joy at the last good drink of fresh rainwater before the blast of summer comes up. Not bad, God! Definitely an A+.

So some time back M’hijito needed a new dryer. Since he pays cash for everything, we put it on my AMEX card so I could rack up a little more in the annual rebate kickback, and he forked over the dollars to me. Sears’s come-on to buy appliances just then was an $80 mail-in rebate offer.

I always figure those are a rip. “Mail-in rebate” too often means “no rebate”: even when you remember to gather all the ditzy pieces of paper required, fill out a form asking for information that’s none of their business, and stuff it all into an envelope, half the time you never get any money back. But nothing ventured, nothing gained: shortly after we acquired the dryer, I shipped off the paperwork. That was several months ago.

Now comes in the mail from Sears the rebate…in the form of a debit card! It’s a preloaded Mastercard debit card.

No cash. Noooo….  You’re expected not to drop the money in your savings, but to diddle it away at restaurants and the like. You can transfer the money to your bank account, but this requires you to go online and share all the details of your bank account with Citibank’s Visa employees. You can get cash off the card, but only if you use an approved ATM. If you don’t use ATMs (as those of us for whom cash washes through the fingers like water tend not to do), you’ll just have to spend it.

Okay. So it’s M’hijito’s birthday. I figure $40 apiece would buy us a very nice dinner at a much tonier greasy spoon than we are accustomed to frequenting, and I propose to invite him out to celebrate.

Then I start to look at the swath of fine print that comes with this thing.

It has a $3.00 “account management fee,” which kicks in if you don’t start using the thing. If you use the it outside the U.S.—say in Nogales, a 90-minute drive from here—you get dinged 3% per transaction. If you have not used up the money by the expiration date, they apply a $3.00/month gouge. You are limited to a maximum of 12 transactions a day (“or your daily limit,” whatever that is). To find out what “your daily limit” of transactions is, you have to log onto their website, whose URL is not given. Under the federal anti-terrorism laws, you are required to give them your correct name, correct address, and correct telephone number. They will share this information and any other personal information they gather with whomever they please unless you fill out a separate form, put it in a separate envelope (which you supply) with a separate stamp (which you supply), and mail it off.

It is an “account.” You can reload this card with cash by depositing money with Citibank, and from now until the end of time can pay for junk with plastic. For a fee.

So, I wonder…if they nick you three bucks every time you turn around and this thing is an open “account,” presumably they’re going to start charging you a bank fee of $3 a month whenever it runs out of cash? And it’ll be quite a trick to figure out how much cash is on the thing, right? Because you’ll never know exactly what day of the month they decide to engross three bucks out of this “rebate” gift. And am I right in thinking that effectively Sears has set up a bank account for me, which I have not asked for, at an institution with which I do not choose to do business?

😯

Looking this gift horse in the mouth, I call the number on the card and after just one runaround reach one Duane, a human. When I ask how the $3 nick works and how I go about canceling this thing as soon as I can spend the $80 so generously “given” to me, he admits that on request they’ll send me a check. Great, say I: please do send a check.

Supposedly this vast lucre will show up in the mail sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll believe it when I see it.

😀

Really, I do dislike mail-in rebates. They’re such a nuisance. And this new twist is plain annoying. What’s difficult about just sending the money in the first place? Or better yet: How’s about giving customers a fair price in the store, rather than making us jump through hoops to shave off a few bucks?

 

3 thoughts on “A “Gift” from Sears”

  1. What a pain. I guess I would have taken it to the grocery or garden center and spent it all at once. Many of the gift cards you can buy at drugstores come with hefty activation fees. Not a nice gift, when you think about it.

  2. Unbelievable! Thank goodness you called and found out about the check – my fingers are crossed that you get that quickly so you can dump this piece of …

    You know what’s just as great? We just discovered that the state of CA is now sending cards in lieu of checks for their beknighted disability payments too.

    W.T.!!

  3. @ Revanche: Yup. That’s how the State of AZ disburses unemployment insurance, too. You can opt out, though…it’s a hassle, but you can get them to direct-deposit to a checking account.

    Arizona state employees tend to be so poorly paid that many are unbanked, so the theory is that this will somehow be better than having to cash mailed checks at a cambio.

    The UI people warn you that the cards come with all sorts of strings attached. Make a mistake, and the bank gloms a chunk of your dough.

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