Last Friday, CVS sent out an email to customers offering “20% off your entire purchase in store or online*”.

*MOUSE PRINT:

“The 20% sale cannot be combined with another product sale running at the same time. You will receive the larger discount.” — disclaimer for online coupon use.

“*Excludes sale items.” — disclaimer for in-store coupon use.

Those exclusions are pretty limiting considering your “entire purchase” really is not covered.  What makes them worse was the fact that those disclosures were not made anywhere in the email itself. You had to visit CVS.com to find them out.

Still worse were the seeming 40% off discounts promised off the regular price of “Red Hot Deals” featured on the landing page of CVS.com:

MrConsumer placed those three 40% items in his cart, but when checking the cart, the 40% discounts had completely disappeared. Well, maybe the right sale prices only show up when you are about to checkout?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nope. Even on the very last page of the ordering process after providing a credit card number, all the 40% off items remained at full price. Had MrConsumer clicked the “submit order” button there, he would have been charged $42.47 for items that had been advertised for $25.47. That’s an overcharge of $17.  This is the online equivalent of a scanner error where the store sign promised 40% off, but the items scanned regular price at the cash register.

CVS subsequently corrected their error, but who knows how many people might have been overcharged in the interim.

The lesson here is that just because an item is advertised on a website for a particular price, you must double-check to see whether that is the price that is actually charged once the item is in your cart and you are at the checkout.

Unlike airlines that charge customers higher fares the closer to the departure date you make your reservation, some car rental firms actually lower the price as the rental date draws nearer.  They don’t advertise that fact, they just do it quietly.

Example: MrConsumer helped a friend book a 12-day rental starting on August 22 from Logan airport in Boston. At the end of July — approximately three weeks in advance — the total rate including taxes was in the high $400s for Alamo – and that was using a coupon and a group discount.

Exactly two weeks before the start date of the rental, just for the fun of it, MrConsumer checked prices again at Alamo on a new reservation, using a better coupon — $40 off a 10-day rental.  Between the coupon and a new price reduction, the exact same rental dropped to $420.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Not bad, a savings of about $60.

Checking prices again exactly one week before the rental was scheduled to begin revealed another price drop of close to $100. It was now down to $337.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Wow, that’s a total savings of almost $150 compared to the price that would have been charged on the earliest reservation. 

And, checking the rates one day later, the price dropped to $317.

Now, on August 17, just five days before the rental, the price dropped again:

*MOUSE PRINT:

We are now under $300 for the rental, an almost $200 savings compared to the price quoted at the end of July.

It can’t get any lower, can it?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Wow.. as of Wednesday, August 18 — just four days before the rental — the price dropped over $30 to $267. Will the discounts ever end?

Two days before the car rental was scheduled to begin, the price dropped one last time, albeit by only $7.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Just to finish the price history of the rental, the day before the actual rental, the price jumped up to $414.91.  And on the day of the rental itself, the price was $434.68.  Amazingly, the highest price Alamo offered was the first one — for the reservation made over three weeks before the actual rental date. The total savings for MrConsumer’s friend amounted to over $220 by making weekly, and then daily checks of prices as the rental date drew near.

Surprisingly, in this case, it was substantially cheaper renting at the airport than from an in-town location. (The opposite is usually true.) Compounding the problem of high rates is that string of junk fees and taxes that boosts the price substantially, no matter how low the published rate is per day.

Because no one knows if prices are going to go up or down in any particular case, or with any particular car rental firm,  it is still wise to book early (using all the discounts and coupons you can find), but check again repeatedly  as the rental date approaches.  If you find a lower price, book the new reservation, then cancel the old one.

In the CVS drugstore circular on August 1, the company promised to give customers who signed up for their email list a $4 coupon:

The unreadable fine print in the reduced size picture above only refers to the company’s privacy policy, and that people already on their list are not eligible.

Seemed like an easy way to save $4 to Linda D., a regular Mouse Print* reader. So she signed up at their website. She  filled out her name and email address on the page that contained this description (actual size):

So far, so good. Then she got an email from CVS with her coupon:

Excuse me, $4 off a $20 purchase? Where did that come from? There was no mention whatsoever about this coupon requiring a minimum purchase in the circular. Even visiting the CVS website on the page where you fill in your name and email address, there was no disclosure right on that page either [since changed as noted below].  If you were to click to see the sample coupon, you would have seen the $20 minimum purchase requirement, but few would probably have a reason to view the sample coupon.

Most people would only find out they’ve been hoodwinked after they had given CVS their personal information.

Mouse Print* contacted the PR folks at CVS to ask if they didn’t think this promotion was deceptive, and whether they would now provide people who signed up with a no-strings-attached $4 off coupon. They responded, in part:

“On the sign-up page, a sample coupon was displayed setting forth the details of the offer.

While we feel the information was available, CVS/pharmacy appreciates customer feedback and moving forward, we have enhanced the language for this ad to indicate more clearly that this is an offer for a $4 off $20 coupon. This change has already been made online at www.cvs.com/email. We have also made this change to our circular and it will be reflected on the online circular beginning on 8/22 and due to printing lead times, the new ad will begin running in the printed circular the week of 9/5.”

So, basically CVS decided against doing the honorable thing right away — offering those who signed up based on the misleading ad a no-strings-attached $4 coupon. And notice that they made no mention of running a retraction in newspapers across the country, as might be required by various state advertising laws.

Most of us are used to seeing infomercials where a product is offered with a free trial period. You pay the advertised price, and then if you decide you don’t like the product, you return it, and get your money back.

Now, there is a new breed of promotion,  like this PowerMeter ad. It appears you pay $9.95 for the device that measures the speed of your golf swing, and if you don’t like it, you can return it within 30 days.

If on the other hand you like it,  you might assume that you just keep it. Not so fast.

*MOUSE PRINT:

“If after 30 days you still like the Medicus Power Meter, then it’s just 4 payments of $19.95″ … PowerMeter website

So the $9.95 advertised price is the price of the “risk free trial”, not the price of the item. If you keep the PowerMeter, it will cost you a total $89.75 . 

The total price of the item may come as a surprise to purchasers who assumed the price  that was advertised was in fact the price of the product. To make matters worse, most infomercials that use this new technique of advertising, don’t disclose the actual cost of the product itself in the commercial even in mouse print. 

Incidentally, if you don’t keep the product, it isn’t even clear if you get your $9.95 back because this was not a “free trial” but a “risk free trial.”

Thanks to Eric from the Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection for this submission.

In May, Mouse Print*’s sister site, Consumer World, promoted a great bargain of the week: Buy Norton Anti-Virus 2010 for $39.99 at OfficeDepot, and get THREE rebates — a $20 debit card, a $20 check, and two movie tickets worth up to $24. Few offers are ever as generous as this one.

Of course, the trouble with rebates, is that you always have to monitor fulfillment and occasionally have to fight with the rebate fulfillment company to get what you are owed. That was the case with these rebates for MrConsumer, and we wonder if others may have had similar difficulties as well. [Please comment below if you ran into a problem getting your rebate on this offer.]

On May 9th, MrConsumer purchased the proper Norton product and mailed away the three rebates in one envelope (despite a warning that doing so might cause a delay). Periodically he checked SymantecRebates.com, the website where one can track rebate submissions. Nothing was showing up as having been received. So on June 7, he contacted the rebate fulfillment house (Parago) via their toll-free number. He was directed to fax in copies of all the rebates in three separate faxes.

*MOUSE PRINT: From the rebate form:

“Make a copy of your rebate submission for future reference.”

Now you know why that provision is included. If you haven’t copied everything you mailed, you will not be able to resubmit the form and proofs of purchase if something goes wrong.

To make a long story short(er), despite faxing in all the paperwork, not once, but three times over the course of the next three weeks at the request of the customer service department at Parago, one of the rebates — the one for the free movie tickets — simply never made it into their rebate tracking system (until days after the third fax).

MrConsumer poked around online on the day the submission was faxed for the third time to find someone to rectify this situation at Parago. (The customer service folks at the call center in the Dominican Republic simply could not go beyond the ”fax it again” routine.) After finding the name of the CEO, an email was quickly dispatched to her.

Exactly 11 minutes later, the CEO responded saying that she would look into the matter, and later she called MrConsumer to relate her findings. Wow, wow, wow. [Note that this response was not because MrConsumer invoked the name of Consumer World or his prior position as an assistant attorney general, but rather because this top executive, a co-founder of the company, takes these types of problems seriously when brought to her attention.]

The CEO even indicated that she skipped a board meeting call to try to get to the bottom of the problem. In short, no excuses were made for the failure of their systems, and a humble apology was offered. She also arranged for the missing movie tickets to be delivered by overnight express delivery the next day.

And they arrived as promised. An additional unpleasant surprise, however, was a notation on the movie “tickets” that said they expired on August 31.

*MOUSE PRINT: The terms of the rebate offered stated:

“Tickets expire 12/31/10″

The CEO promised to check with Symantec to get to the bottom of that issue.

Before we let Parago, the fulfillment house, off the hook so easily because of the extraordinary customer service provided by their CEO, something seems to be wrong in the processing of some Symantec (Norton) rebates, based on MrConsumer’s current and past experiences.

In two out of the three rebates for Norton Anti-Virus 2010, MrConsumer received a status email from Parago, indicating the submission was invalid.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Missing proof of purchase? No, it was included. In fact, two copies were included for one of the rebates. Missing email confirmation? No, this was a retail store purchase at Office Depot, so no email confirmation is even possible or required for a brick and mortar store purchase.

A call to Parago’s customer service department quickly resulted in an instant approval of the denied rebates. When asked why this mistake happened in one of the cases, the representative simple said “stuff happens.” Baloney.

Parago’s CEO explained what happened:

“When the resub was done via fax (and the campaign was in an open status), it was invalidated because the campaign rules require an “original” UPC code.  Your original, however, was sent with your original envelope, so you had no way of submitting an original. Symantec allows us to override when this happens, but the override can only get triggered when the customer calls, which is how you ultimately were made valid.”

Of course, it makes no sense for customer service to tell a caller whose original submission never was received or failed to make it into Parago’s computer system to fax in a duplicate, if the duplicate is going to be automatically rejected.

Every rejection, right or wrong,  is money in the pocket of the company offering the rebate. And that is how manufacturers can afford to offer generous rebates.  They know that some purchasers will not bother to submit them, will submit them improperly, or will fail to follow-up if the rebate goes unfulfilled or is erroneously rejected.  All that saved money benefits the company offering the rebate, and is known as “breakage.”  According to patents obtained by Parago:

*MOUSE PRINT:

“Breakage refers to any event that prevents a rebate transaction from being completed, for example, denying based on bad verification materials such as receipts or UPC symbols, denying based on improper purchase dates or purchase price, or slippage from checks issued but not cashed.

Because rebate programs offer the potential for breakage, manufacturers can offer a more valuable rebate compared to a straight reduction in product price. Thus, manufacturers establish procedures to maintain a sufficient rate of breakage …”

In MrConsumer’s personal experience,  maybe one in three or four valid and complete rebates submitted for Norton products have been initially erroneously rejected in recent years (but subsequently approved upon calling to complain). Could this just be a coincidence?

Without going into excruciating detail, Parago explained in MrConsumer’s case this time (which they say was an unusual one), that several things went wrong: all three rebates were submitted in one envelope; two of the three promotions were not yet “open” (active in Parago’s system — a fault, apparently of Symantec); and a flaw in their system kept some of the original rebate submissions and/or resubmissions from being properly entered into their system. Parago’s CEO concluded by saying:

“My only last comment on our email dialogue is that in our business, there is nothing worse than a ‘false invalid’.  Low invalid rates are the sign of a very well run program.  So while mistakes were made, the only thing I can say is that it benefitted no one….not you, not Parago and not Symantec.  A bad customer experience is a heck of a lot more costly than a rebate.  As I mentioned when we spoke, I wish we processed all 50MM rebates perfectly. I hate when mistakes are made. But we always try to learn from them and grow and improve.  That is why I appreciate it when customers like yourself take the time to reach out to me.”

Parago has indicated to Mouse Print* that it is undertaking some process changes that will help avert some of the issues raised by this encounter.

Again, we encourage readers to comment on your personal experience, good or bad, by clicking the ”comments” link below. [We ask that you keep the comments civil, factual, and relevant.]

If you experience a problem in getting a rebate processed by Parago for a Norton/Symantec product, first try calling their customer service number at 866-206-8800. Most complaints can be resolved at that level. If you do not receive a satisfactory response, Parago has provided readers of Mouse Print* with a specific contact person for additional help: Bob.Wood@parago.com