Corporate America Beware!

Last June I purchased a new stick of RAM for our desktop. I purchased the RAM from TigerDirect and for those of you that don't know, TigerDirect sells computer parts at discounted prices, which usually involve a mail-in-rebate. The rebates are often handled by a separate company that specializes in rebates and the processing thereof. I jumped through all of the hoops, crossed all my T's and dotted every i, then sent the rebate in. It was processed and accepted in July 2006, now I just wait for the check. So I waited and I waited, and I waited again. It never came, so I sent them a friendly email. No response. So a few weeks later I did it again, no response. Last week, I sent in the fifth email and over six months have passed and they still have not sent out payment. I was starting to get really frustrated.

Yesterday I was going through my email and noticed an email from this rebate company. It was an advertisement about some special rebate that they had going on, blah blah blah. I was getting ready to delete this piece of junk mail when I noticed that it was in the form of a letter and had the name of the CEO signed at the bottom. What a jerk, I wanted to tell him about how I was being mistreated by his company, and here he was sending me spam. After staring at his name for a few minutes a little dim Christmas light came on in my skull. I had an idea.

I have noticed a trend in most companies when it comes to email addresses, that trend being that most corporate email addresses are some combination of the employee's name. So I feverishly wrote an email explaining my plight and how I have yet to get a response from their so called "Customer Service" department. Now lets say that the CEO's name was Testy McTest and he works for rebate.com. I simply addressed this email to: tmctest@rebate.com, testy.mctest@rebate.com, testymctest@rebate.com, and then I pushed the send button. The chances of one of these addresses being right, is somewhat slim. The chances of my email getting through a SPAM filter are very very slim. The chances of a CEO responding to my email are almost non-existent. I didn't expect anything but I felt better anyway.

So this morning I checked my email, waded through all of the emails asking me if I wanted to enhance myself, or invest in this stock, or win a free laptop, when suddenly my eye fell on the sender of one email. It was from testy.mctest@rebate.com! He sent me a quick note, saying that it would be taken care of and that was that! HA! I couldn't believe it, the long shot payed off..... or at least I hope it does, and if it doesn't I know what email address to send my complaints to.