CompuServe Rebate Class Action Suit
from the incompetent-companies dept
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Compuserve for messing up rebate payments to a number of people. Compuserve had been using a $400 rebate to entice people to buy computers and use its service, but from the sounds of some of the stories they didn’t seem to be prepared to handle these rebates and messed up quite a number of them. I’m surprised at how often these things happen. Do people at these companies think that these things take care of themselves? Whatever happened to actually preparing?
Comments on “CompuServe Rebate Class Action Suit”
Rebate Peeve
One rebate peeve: they’re like coupons in that they’re never worth their quoted value because of various limitations, i.e. they’re only good under certain conditions and can’t be combined with others. For example, E*TRADE recently offered a $400 rebate for signing up in tandem with a Micro Center purchase of >$400. Since you can get a $75 rebate just for opening an account with no strings attached, the real value of this is $325, and it’s actually less than that because Micro Center’s prices and selection were awful during the time that the rebate was in effect, so I estimate that it might have been worth $200 and still requires the E*TRADE account to be left open for a year. Still, that was a good enough deal and I took it (and got the rebate already), but it is misleading in advertising to subtract the rebate amount from the purchase price as if it were exactly the same as cash in hand.
If CompuServe is charging rebatees $21.95 for the same service everybody else gets for $19.95, then they should at least add $2 x 36 = $72 to the apparent prices they advertise, but I don’t think that goes far enough.
Re: Rebate Peeve
I agree. Two years ago I bought a Gateway computer through 1-800-gateway, which came with the Compuserve $400 rebate. I sent the form to Compuserve, and never received my rebate. When I inquired about it, they had incorrectly set up my account, and claimed they never received the form. After sending in a new rebate form, they had to close my account and open a new one. I finally received the rebate after months.
Apparently, I didn’t read the ultra fine print, because two years later, I want to cancel my account, and Compuserve very rudely told me that I owe them $350. If Gateway would have told me there were strings attached, I never ever would have gone with Compuserve.
Try to cancel service !!
after reading your comments, along with other ones, i’m not at all surprised about the problems I am having with them. Back in october 2001,I called and got the service cancelled. Of course because of the rebate deal,(a deal really?), I was told that I owed them $250 because I had a year left on the contract. Well, willing to pay just to get out of the service, I had the money sitting in my account for 2 months when i finally got a phone call from a collection agency telling me that compuserve had turned the matter to them, and that it was just the way they handled the cancellations. So as of december 2001, I considered the matter closed because i had paid the agency. Surprise!! I’m still getting letters saying that I still owe them the cancellation fee, well actually for some reason the amount doubled.It has been 2 months since I started to make phone calls every single day trying to get the situation cleared.My latest phone call was today.The account still shows delinquent, and a second escalation request has been put in.The question of the day, which was asked by one of their representatives, why didn’t you send the money here instead of the collection agency?? If anyone has any advice, I’m open for any suggestion.
Re: Try to cancel service !!
I am having a similar problem with Compuserve. My bankcard was stolen in May. I contacted Compuserve with my new account info., but it was never updated on their end. In June I began recieving collection calls. I have spoken to several Compuserve Supervisors who will not give me any phone numbers including their Legal Department. Please let me know if or how you rectified your account issues.
Re: Try to cancel service !!
Have been trying to cancel the service for at least two weeks. The phone simply disconnects even after waiting a long time. I wish there was a class action law suit on this issue.