Staples, Inc
"That Was Easy"? We just spent

"That Was Easy"???

We just spent over $200 on back to school supplies for our kids. Staples offers "rebates" on certain items, which is nice in itself, but here's the silly part...

The register tape receipt is used to print out the rebate form. Each rebate tape is full of directions, instructions, disclaimers, and other legalease, and as a result, prints out over two feet long.

Again, not that big a deal, right? Well, in addition to that print out, you also get a copy of your register receipt that must be mailed in along with the rebate form.

So what, right? Well, our receipt was for almost 70 items, and it is almost three feet long when printed out.

But that's not the funny part.

Because we purchased several things that had rebates included with them, each individual rebate required not only a full printout of the rebate receipt, it also required an additional full copy of our register receipt. Doing a little math, each rebate consumed over five feet of register tapes, and we had a total of seven, so I now have in my hand a wad of over thirty five feet of 3-inch wide paper.

But wait—it gets even better...

With a rebate, you have two options—mail in, or on-line entry. It turns out, that with the online entry, there are only two numbers that you need to have in order to apply for your rebates, both of which are hidden somewhere on the rebate receipt form. One is seven digits with a hyphen, and the other is 18 digits, that you have to enter twice. But hold on there babba-loowie, there's more.

The big long 18 digit number on each receipt is the exact same number, and is printed out for each individual rebate. So really, all you needed was that single 18 digit number (which is also a barcode), that references the register purchase for all the items you obtained, and even determines exactly which items are eligible for rebates without all the other stuff to begin with, so in reality, about 1-inch of all the paper that was printed out was all that was required.

And it took almost five minutes to print. I even got a bag, JUST FOR THE RECEIPTS.

And the best part is I get to wait for 4 - 6 weeks before my $19 rebate check arrives. I wonder how much paper that will be printed on.

Company: Staples, Inc
Country: USA

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