i just spent 48 minutes on the phone for nothing. i fought with the stupid rebate company for $100 which I've been waiting for since October. When I went to visit their site I filled out a form and wrote all this:

I have been trying to get my rebate processed since October of 2004. It is now February 24, 2005 and have not yet received my rebate. Instead my rebate has been rejected now 2 times and is on its way for a 3rd reject.

Today I spoke with Alicia (Rep #492013) at the customer care department after speaking with 3 people before her who continually had to escalate the call to give me to further other than to wait for my 3rd rejection letter. I was told the first time that my rebate was rejected because the telephone number that was sent along with my rebate was illegible or that my handwriting made it hard to read so the data entry clerk typed in the wrong number. Since the telephone number was printed on my store receipt correctly this was obviously their error and not mine. The second time the rebate was rejected was because they failed to read a note regarding an account number change that occurred in May of 2004 which was again an error of TMobile's and your processing department for not having read the note and letting it get cancelled again. Alicia kindly told me that there's nothing they can do except run the rebate through again and cross their fingers that nothing was incorrectly typed or the note on my account doesn't get ignored again but that they could NOT guarantee me that my rebate will go through the third time either. That means that I will find out in April of 2005 (that's 6 months after I bought my phone!) that my rebate got cancelled for the 3rd time because of your mistake. Ultimately the only solution is no solution. Either I continue to call the customer care department ever 6 weeks and request them to reprocess the rebate or give up.

I have had a similar experience with your company's rebates in the past and most people have told me that Young America is known for their rebates to never go through. Clearly this must be a huge source of income for your company. So the game is that you sell yourselves as a great rebate reprocessing service and then indirectly con people out of their money and thus degrade the company's reputation (T-Mobile's reputation that is � your reputation doesn't really matter because its an indirect relationship to the public.)

So how do you reconcile your rebates that don't go through? Who gets that money? Do you evenly distribute it to all your employees or do you give it to charity or do you direct all non refunded rebates into some big executive's account? I can only guess.

You see the problem is that you sell yourselves as having �flawless �back-end� execution� but clearly its more than just a little flawed as is the case with my rebate not being processed and there being no solution for it. Your �state of the art technology� can�t be that great if you can�t do anything to reverify a rebate for a third time in less than 4-6 weeks. And its obvious that the supposed �certification for quality� is meaningless when your quality is completely unacceptable.

Anyone who knows anything about customer service should know that this kind of practice is going to gain you a very unsavory reputation quicker than you think because there�s nothing like bitching about rebates around the water-cooler at work and that just inspires more and more people not to buy rebate products. The best business process outsourcers will gain a better reputation and sweep all your clients (Best Buy�s rebate service run by Resolve Corporation is known as one of the best already.)
I could tell you I feel cheated or lied to but that wouldn�t be worth much. What is worth something to me is this direct experience. More than just the promise to never submit a rebate to your service again, I think what might be more effective is to BLOG this online and let others find out for themselves. Given that I also work for a large company who continually makes business decisions about outsourcing I will remember this experience and will enforce stronger and more supported service level agreements if and only if I must outsource a service with a low or no customer satisfaction risk.

I may never get my rebate but you may never see how this experience and the untold numbers of others like me can impact your business � but it will and it does.

Sincerely,

BUNNY VOLSTEAD
Mobile #--------------
Tracking ID: 5027-1 54241584

Unfortunatly, the form had a 300 character limit to it so clearly I wasn't able to communicate this message except to say:

You suck!