Those mail-in rebates are bad; they depend upon a minority of people being able to successfully redeem them. They hide from the market the information that sho

Those mail-in rebates are bad; they depend upon a minority of people being able to successfully redeem them. They hide from the market the information that should be encapsulated in a price that reflects cost and demand. If a manufacturer's product is not moving, instead of a mail in rebate, they should pay the retailer directly to lower the price. This forces manufacturers to face the music when they make something that no one wants or is overpriced; they will be more careful next time, or the bad ones will go out of business; that is the way the market is supposed to work. Tolerating these rebates is like allowing bad manufacturers to cover their loses by offering gullible consumers a game of three card monte. The way to make it honest, is to setup a table outside the door to Fry's or Best Buy, and offer a dollar, a cup of coffee and a donut, or some other small reward to every shopper will agree to sit down right there, fill out the rebate, apply the stamp you will supply, and mail it. With any kind of reasonable rate of return the rebates would vanish. The reason why your idea will fail, is that it is too hard to transmit all the purposefully burdensome documentation required to retrieve the rebate.