CyberRebate
Today I received the settlement check. It was worth about 8.8 cents on the dollar.
In case you have never heard of the company before, CyberRebate was yet another dot-com company that came to life during the Internet era. What attracted everyone to this company was that they were giving away free stuff. From electronics, computers, household goods, the company was literally giving them all awayfor FREE!
I say literally because one had to pay money for the products upfront and then wait several months for the rebate. Worse still, the prices were overinflated by a factor of about 10. For example, a DVD would cost $150, a CD-ROM would cost $500, a monitor would cost $2500, etc. So, one would lose a pretty penny on the opportunity costs. But, the products were worth enough to cover the opportunity costs.
Well, everything was fine for about a year. Then, the company declared bankrupt and stopped honoring the rebate checks. So, I was stuck with $15 DVDs that I paid $150 each for. Fortunately, I charged everything to the credit cards and could dispute all of the charges.
But, unfortunately, one credit card company did not give me back my money. To make a long story short, I made the mistake of paying the credit card company. They threatened to ruin my credit if I did not pay, which they did anyways.
Lesson learned. I was that much more nave back then. But, today, I am a lot wiser and much more sophisticated.
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i was wondering how differently will you deal with the cc company that didnt give you back your money now? it seems to me if the cc company refuses to refund your money there is little/nothing you can do. if they sent the debt to the collection agency you may end up spending more time fighting them.
This is classic Pyramid/Multi-level Scam. The mathematics of why these can't work are indisputable and anyone who gets involved in them will either loss money or in order to make money will have gotten lots of other people in it who will lose money. Money cannot be squeezed out of the air. You either have to provide a service or product that adds value or you have to take money from someone else. There is no other way to make money. It would be a good financial service to readers to do a series on multi-levels and why they are a fast train to the poor house.
This wasn't really a pyramid scheme, more of a business model based on people screwing up. If the lottery is a tax for people who aren't good at math, cyber rebate was a tax for the unorganized. They based their business banking on x percent of people forgetting to claim their rebate, and those people end up paying $150 for a dvd. It didn't work.
You can say anything you want about their "business" and what they were "banking" on. Its a pyramid scheme. Anyone who thought that any significant number of people were going to pay 10 times the normal rate for something and then forget about it is simply not in control of their mental faculties. Heck normal rebates like save 10 bucks on a Radio don't have a 10 to 1 failure to claim rate. It was a rip off like all pyramids and they were just using the internet to reproduce the same old cons that have been spinning around this earth for centuries.
