I have had an impossible situation with collecting a CompUSA rebate. For more than 1yr I have sent information followed up with "wheresmyrebate.com" and pursued all possible options...NO LUCK. I am considering prosecuting them for fraud. Anyone have a similar noghtmare or I am just lucky?

-- David Frumkin (dave_frumkin@yahoo.com), May 05, 2003

Answers

May 27, 2003 I will be very hesitant to ever again respond to a CompUSA advertisement that offers a rebate.

There was an ad in the Nashville Tennessean on February 16, 2003. On the back page of the circular, it states "FREE! FREE! FREE! after savings & rebates". I saw the new version of LapLink was included. I like LapLink and use it several times a week. So, I bought it for $109.23 (including sales tax) and sent the reqiured rebate forms to LapLink on February 20, 2003. I received a U.S. Postal Service Delivery Confirmation Receipt on February 22, 2003.

After 12 weeks, I have not received the $100 rebate as promised in the CompUSA advertisement.

Upon sending a request to LapLink regarding the status of the rebate, the company responded with this notice:

"LapLink Inc., ("LapLink") filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 18, 2003 in the US Bankruptcy Court in Seattle, Case No. 03- 13521. In addition we signed an agreement to sell our assets to a third party. The bankruptcy court will consider the proposed sale at a hearing to be scheduled sometime in early May. You will receive notice of this hearing. The sale should be concluded by the middle to latter part of May."

It certainly seems suspicious that one month before declaring bankruptcy, the company offered a rebate through CompUSA. Both CompUSA and its customers are suffering.

Regards, Jesse Taylor gopcs@yahoo.com

-- Jesse Taylor (gopcs@yahoo.com), May 27, 2003.

I have done the same. Sent in my rebate in October 2002. Of course it was not received in the normal 8 - 10 weeks so I started asking about it. After numerous inquiries, I received the bankruptcy notice. Calls to the company have resulted in no one being available, the extension for the person handling the rebates has the same recording from October ("there MAY be a delay in processing your request), and all recordings request you respond via email. What a pile of crap. I will never buy another laplink product again. Not sure if COMPUSA is really to blame. Though I think their customer service is worthless, the really may be in the same boat as the customers, having to deal with the bankruptcy. I don't know what the details of the bankruptcy are, but no one at Laplink corporate is talking. I would seriously consider being part of a class action lawsuit if that is your intent. Thanks.

-- john mccusker (mccuskerj@aol.com), May 30, 2003.

Couple other things I just thought of that you can do. 1. If your local TV station has an investigative team, contact them and tell them about this. That's what I'm going to do. Especially if anyone reading this is located in Bothell Washington, which is where LapLink headquarters is, contacting the local TV station would be great. 2. Do not buy ANY laplink products in the future. 3. I believe before bankruptcy, LapLink also offered rebates on their LapLink Anywhere product. Anyone have any details on that? 4. Switch to PCAnywhere. I DO NOT have any stake in Symantec, I'm not an employee or sales person or in any way associated with Symantec, but they are offering an upgrade rebate on PCAnywhere if you show proof of ownership on other remote access software such as Reach Out, Carbon Copy, and LapLink. I recently bought a copy at Fry's and with the upgrade rebate, it also turned out to be free. And I don't see Symantec declaring bankruptcy anytime soon. They are not dependant on only one product.

Those are some things I'm going to do. Anyone affected by this problem, keep in touch on this site and let everyone know what works or doesn't.

-- john mccusker (mccuskerj@aol.com), May 30, 2003.

Similar situation, in that COMPUSA rebates are a scam! I've had a $20 DLINK router rebate submitted to them twice. Both times, rejected because of the purchase date. The rebate form that was printed from the COMPUSA register clearly says that i am within the time period. I faxed a "rebate resolution" to them, and they denied it again! What are they looking at!?!? I call them up, and say "Can you locate the paperwork that I have sent you twice? it clearly has the dates." Sorry, that stuff all gets forwarded to the manufacturer. Huh? You don't keep records of where you are sending rebate checks, and why?

give me a break.

-- ac/dc (acdc@nc.rr.com), June 02, 2003.

I have been pursuing an $80 rebate for PCAnywhere 10.5 complete, from rebatestatus.com the vendor who handles Symantec's rebates. My pursuit began back in November of 2002. Apparently in small print the rebate is only for those who have had a previous version of a competitor's product. I was only convinced to spend the $180 for PCAnywhere BECAUSE of the rebate.

I for one am sorry I ever purchased a Symantec product, and will do everything possible to avoid them in the future.

Side note: Although Symantec claims that PCAnywhere will work w/ XP, be warned, you must reboot each time a connection fails. At the time I was using PCAnywhere...there were no KB's about this issue...not sure if they have fixed it since. Foolish me...should have just used Terminal Services via XP to connect to 9x boxes.

Although the $180+ Symantec box (software included) makes a wonderful doorstop...do you think I overpaid?

-- Unhappy Customer (convene@hotmail.com), June 06, 2003.

I have had a similar situation trying to collect a rebate from CompUSA through 'wheresmyrebate.com'. It has been 6 months since I purchased the Argos MP3 player. I have spoken with wheresmyrebate reps on two occassions. I have been assured that the check will be mailed out next month. Yet, no check. When I asked for other numbers to contact, I was given to a supervisor's voice mail. "I'll call you back as soon as possible" - well, apparently 5 weeks has not been enough time, because I have not heard back. I am going to keep calling wheresmyrebate.com, I'm going to contact the local news person who follows up on fraud (which this is starting to look like), and I will never shop at CompUSA again (I'll be letting them know this also) I'm gong to be casting my financial vote somewhere else.....don't buy from CompUSA

-- (Smith_kd@yahoo.com), June 16, 2003.

I too have been scamed by CompUSA, more than once! The biggest ripoff for $80 on Laplink. Today I received an E-Mail from Marketing@laplink.com from Mark Eppley the president of laplink software. I was offered a free upgrade USB 2.0. Of course they want to sell me a high speed cable at $49.95 plus $8.95 shiping. Sounds like business as usual! Funny they couldn't answer my E-mail or phone calls but have no problem trying to get more of my hard earned money. I would like to be included in any action taken against them and CompUSA. This is robbery without a gun and laws should be made to protect all of us. Keep me informed, waiting to hear from you.

-- Rosemarie Hill (lalouang@aol.com), June 24, 2003.

Good job with the effort. I too have little appreciation of CompUSA, and I am glad others are doing the same as me, boycott CompUSA. My story deals with a mail-in rebate when I purchased a set of Nextel phones. The whole deal was to get two phones with a $100 mail-in rebate. Without the rebate there was no point in getting those phones as I could have gotten pretty much any phone for free. I send the UPCs, original receipt, etc.; I wait for 3 months, and no mail-in rebate. I called them up, and I am told to go to the web and go to "whereismyrebate.com" or something like that, where I am told nothing, just that they have not received my rebate. I went to the store, and they say they cannot do anything since they need the receipt. I call the main office they say they can’t do anything cause they need the UPCs. I call the main office again and they say, "sorry but you should have made copies of everything cause we can't process anything without those". So why in the hell do they ask for the originals in the first place? After that I decided I was not going to waste more time dealing with them, it would probably cost me more in time and aggravation than the $100. So since then I have never bought from them again, plus I have persuaded many of going elsewhere to buy their electronics (same goes to BestBuy, but that’s another story). Now, I am about 18 months CompUSA free.

-- Robert (kcrot@hotmail.com), June 25, 2003.

I applied for a rebate in June, 2002. After several inquiries per "where is my rebate", they replied in January 2003 that they were in financial trouble and were offering a years subscription to "Laplink Anywhere" in place of the rebate. I requested that they simply send the prior mentioned $80 rebate.

2 months later, after trying to find out the rebate status, they indicated they were in bankruptcy status and I would receive note of the hearing in March 2003.

I never received notice of this hearing and after talking to a Laplink rep via a hat-window, henindicated "You should receive information about your claim from the court, not us".

They also deleted all information per my rebate request status from their rebate website and indicated that the account was not deleted but "closed". End result, I can not access it.

I would be very happy to be part of a class action suite.

-- Dennis Feick (us_xunil@yahoo.com), July 07, 2003.

I had some problems with CompUSA rebates in the past. I took all of my paperwork into the store and they gave me store credit in the amount of the rebate. Not the best senario, but at least I didn't lose my money completely.

-- Wendy T (wendyzine@yahoo.com), July 13, 2003.

I've received every single one of my rebates with no problem. I have no clue why you are not receiving yours. Incorrect paperwork? Not reading all the fine print? Instead of complaining just don't buy anything with rebates! Pay the full retail price and then you will be happy :)

-- John (name@company.com), July 15, 2003.

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-- -- Karrisa (xxx@msn.com) (Karrisa (xxx@msn.com)), July 21, 2003.

i have not got any at all but i do wont all cell phone rebates

-- devon kirven (Misslbkcutie2004@aol.com), July 30, 2003.

I bought a monitor from CompUSA with a "$90 rebate". Upon purchase I asked why my receipt only showed eligibility for a $20 rebate. A service rep told me "that's ok, don't worry about it". I was then handed two rebate forms for $20, and one for $50. I asked why I don't get just one form for $90. He said "it's ok". The vendor ended up not honoring the "extra" rebate forms, because "multiple submissions are not accepted". I got 20 bucks back. After going at it in an email battle with CompUSA Oz, they finally called me at home and told me they would refund the remaining $70. HA! Nothing. Nada. The thing is, people are not finding out fast enough how horrible CompUSA is. It will be another 3 or 4 years before people outright stop shopping there, and by then we will have given them enough millions of dollars to start a new scam circuit with a different name. Reformed Sucker Tampa, FL

-- Reformed Sucker (sspuacmks@yahoo.com), August 13, 2003.