Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving!

I find myself wondering something: were you able to search the text of every blog posted today, how many times would you find the word Turkey? I;m guessing in just about every one of them. So, I’ll make the obligatory mention and say I’ve had my fill, but man. . .turkey is so good. Why do we only cook it once a year?

The real reason for my post has little or nothing to do with the fact that today is Thanksgiving (except only for the fact that tomorrow is Black Friday).

Ahhh, Black Friday (why does everything have to be a black thing?? And why is it that we only have White Sales on Martin Luther King Day). I hate Black Friday. I hate it because the deals are too spectacular to pass up, but you can’t be at every store during the 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. time frame they give you. Brand new DVD’s for under $5 (new releases), lap-top computers for $299, televisions too big for any room in a normal house for under $1,000, hard drives, flash memory, video cameras, video games, CD’s . . . and on, and on, and on, and on.

My problem is this: THE REBATE. I hate the rebate. I loathe the rebate. If you want me to be able to have brand “x” printer for $50, don’t make me pay $150 and send 1,000 pieces of paper to everyone except the pope to get 4 checks back in the amount of $25 each. I don’t want to do my banking with your store. If I wanted to do my banking with your store, I would have a credit card with you. Otherwise, I want to hand you the money you want for a specific good, and I want the good. I don’t want to haggle with your “people” to get my “over-payment” back.

Somewhere, there is a magic number, and I would love to know what that magic number is. What I mean is that a store expects a certain percentage of the purchasing population to never fill out the rebates (or. . .GOD forbid, fill them out incorrectly). So, in order to offer you the ultimate low price of $50 for the printer, a certain number of people are expected to “over-pay” to the tune of $150 total for the printer. While there are loss leaders, the company still expects to come out “on-top” by selling you a printer for $50. Statistical gurus and actuaries most likely sit around and crunch numbers for weeks determining how much they can sell their printers for and how much they can give back and how much they won’t have to give back, all over the actual cost of the printer. It’s mind boggling, but somewhere, someone has turned it into a very simple equation, and for the life of me, I hate that person.

Alas, I have to wake up early tomorrow to go get in line to get rebate paperwork.Ω