“rapid”, my ass!

there’s an old texas expression…

“there’s two numbers for how many guns a man owns – how many he actually owns, and how many his wife thinks he owns!”

i write this knowing my lovely wife doesn’t read this page. so, when i recently decided to blow the last of some sold stock money on a pistol i approached like the women in the late twentieth century allegedly approached shopping – don’t look at how much i spent, look at how much i SAVED!

in this case said savings was in the form of a mail in rebate. when i worked at dell they were ALL about the mail in rebate. why? because you could legally advertise a price after it – “Only $199.99 (after $500 mail in rebate – $799.99 at time of purchase)” where that shit in parenthesis was in ten point type and the “Only…” part was in ninety-two point type. also, statistically speaking, only 50% of mail in rebates ever get rebated, mainly because people would miss the deadline, or not fill something out right, or what have you. it was a great marketing gimmick and guaranteed only half the money went back out, the rest was all sweet, sweet profit.

so when i saw i could pick up a pocket sized beretta 9mm and save a full hundred bucks after rebate, i jumped on it. i worked at dell. i know where people fuck up. i will NOT fuck up. okay, well, eventually i will not fuck up.

so, i bought the thing online on july 10th. while you can buy pistols online, due to the damn demmy crats (and, honestly, unabashed sanity) you still have to ship said weapon to a dealer so you can fill out the FFL transfer form and get your background check run. so, while i ordered it on july 10th, i didn’t have the thing in hand until july 20th or so. i TRIED to do the rebate before i even picked up the gun (shit, i had already paid for it) but part of the form you fill out includes the serial number on the firearm, and requires a picture of it, so there was no way to do it before the weapon was in hand.

i filled out the form (online) but didn’t have an actual receipt since i’d bought it online so i submitted it with a screen shot from amex showing the purchase. that apparently didn’t fly because three days later when i checked my rebate status online i’d gone from “pending” to “rejected” with a side note that they’d send me a letter explaining what i needed to submit to get things right.

(it should be noted that i didn’t wait for said document, which is a good thing because it never arrived)

figuring it was the receipt thing (it was) i went on the site and found there was a receipt i could download, so i did and re-submitted. now when i logged in the app it showed i had two claims, one rejected, and one that went rather quickly from “pending” to “in-process”. keep in mind this was all done in JULY.

and to explain the title, the website you checked on this thing was “rapid-rebates.com”

i checked it with some regularity (weekly at the least) and never saw any progress. but on the contact link to reach out to them and see what the fuck was going on they had some required fields that they’d never given you the answers to, so i had no way to submit a query. finally, shortly after the beginning of OCTOBER i moved to “rebate-issued” status. on the site it says to allow UP TO TEN WEEKS for your shit to process. they are NOT bullshitting. they will take every minute of it.

what was even more fun was the check showed up on friday, october 14th, but the check was dated september 13th, 2022. to add to the excitement it says on the check in three different places that it’s not valid if it’s not cashed by november 1, 2022 – only two weeks AFTER you get it.

mine was cashed in under two HOURS after i got it.

so if you ever have dealings with that site keep in mind they WILL issue your rebate, but that “rapid” part? not so much…