I just read a MacCentral Report where Amazon.com spokesperson Ling Hong announced that the online retailer is pulling the $50 Jaguar rebate.
“The demand exceeded our wildest expectations,” Ling Hong told MacCentral. “We’re taking stock to see if we’ll reinstate the offer, but we’re not continuing the rebate at this time.”
Excuse me? Amazon.com is only making offers that it thinks we aren’t interested in? The original terms of the deal that I reported in Tuesday’s weblog was that the offer was good until Sept. 3.
This is a very poor decision on Amazon.com’s behalf. In fact, it’s outrageous.
Oops
I didn't check out the offer while it was live, but my guess would be that Amazon was using the Jaguar offer as a loss-leader to pitch other stuff. After two days they probably went over the numbers, realized that they were selling far more copies of Jaguar at a loss than they were ever going to make up in impulse buying, and decided to stop the bleeding.
Disappointing? Sure. Dishonest? Hardly.
Rather...
I think Amazon.com is a little wary of taking such a large monetary "hit"; they have come to their senses and realized that a higher percentage than usual of thier clientelle will turn off the "AutoFlake" on this offer and actually redeem the $50 rebate... I can't blame them, what's the percieved long-term benefit of pulling X number more customers in to the One-Click-and-we'll-spam-the-hell-out-of-ya Amazon fold?
Actually, Amazon is selling a lot of other stuff with Jaguar
According to the links on the 10.2 page, their "People who purchased this have also ordered..." things like Adobe Photoshop 7.0 upgrades, Microsoft Office X (both of which have rebates as well) and other OSX applications. Now, whether you believe their marketing links is another story, but I would guess that getting all of the rebates in one fell swoop would make it worthwile to purchase everything at once. (that and free shipping :-))
Can they do this?
In my hands, I hold a printed copy of the coupon that says order an product on the sheet by Sept 3, and mail in for the printed rebate amount.
How can they legally take back that offer, or say they will only honor Mac OS X order that were made up to the point they pulled the advertising for that offer.
Methinks this could be the beginning of a class action suit.
Link to coupon image.
The offer was good until Sept. 3, No?
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005AFHZ.01.RB02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Re: Link to coupon image.
It appears that Amazon.com got the best of your attempt. :-) Mac OS X is no longer listed on this coupon.
Re: Link to coupon image.
At least as of this writing, the following link does the job:
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00006F7S2.01.RB02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg