Creative Labs Charges "Maintenance Fee" For Rebate
Creative Labs has found a great new way to minimize the risk that a customer will actually benefit from a rebate offer. In Rick's case, they sent him the rebate in the form of a $10 debit card that was supposed to be good until July 2009, but when he went to a Best Buy to use it last month, it was denied. The reason? He'd been charged a $3 "maintenance fee" every month since January.
He writes, "Come on, why print on the card that it expires in July 2009 when it couldn't possibly last beyond April 2009? I guess I'm lucky, at least I haven't gotten a bill for ongoing card maintenance. Anyway, that's the last item I ever buy from Creative Labs, I hope the rebate tactic was worth losing a customer."
If you take advantage of a Creative Labs rebate, use it immediately. Or better yet, don't take the bait the next time Creative dangles a rebate offer in front of you. They're not kidding about it being a "Creative rebate."
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(Photo: cpchannel)
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How exactly is a maintenance fee on a piece of paper/plastic legally applicable?
Cant say Ive found any of Creative's products appealing since the 90s. Logitech has far outpaced them.
@Eldritch: I bought a Zen Stone for my mother for Christmas and she loves it so much that I might pick one up for myself to have a backup MP3 player. (Or maybe just one for audio books.) When I bought hers it was on sale for $25. For that price you don't really need a rebate.
In which state does Rick live? Some states do not allow service/dormancy fees on these cards.
@Overheal: Bought a Creative MuVo2 now that I think of it - brought it home, loaded it: it played 3 seconds of music before locking up, and I had to have it sent off for 3 weeks.
They don't allow dormancy fees *if you paid money for the card*. Rebate prepaid debit cards/gift cards, etc don't apply. For this reason, I IMMEDIATELY buy a store gift card with the prepaid debit rebate cards we get (Norton/Symantec does this, too), which then DOES protect me from dormancy fees, etc, since I "paid" for it.
@jflash972: Might depend on what type of card it actually is. Most laws only apply to gift cards, so depending on how the law is worded, they might be able to get away with it.
wow... Creative that is a low blow! I will think twice about purchasing hardware from you now.
What a bunch of jerks. No shame at all I suppose. Hope it was worth it.
Did Rick bother to read the terms and conditions for the card? The maintenance fee was disclosed there. Staples rebate cards have the same maintenance fee that will eventually gobble up the card's value.
Is this card directly from Creative or some rebate processing company. Either way it's shady.
Meant to put a question mark in my previous post. D'OH!
I got a $100 rebate from alltel in the form of a debit card, so i took it to the bar and the bartender just rang the whole thing right there for me, gave me the cash. it worked out well for the bar though, most of it ended back in their register.
Creative Labs - The company that thinks of new ways to be evil to customers.
Completely lame. It does not cost them anything to keep a balance on a card. Yes he probably should have read the terms but still it does not make it any less lame. The only thing worse would have been a negative balance in the amount of $-2.
@Eldritch: Sandisk. I have a Sansa Express that has lasted me for two years, across three continents, in all manner of weather. It's been a little picky about a few things, but I've put it through conditions that would have killed an iPod or a Zune ten times over. I'd stand by Sandisk stuff, mid-priced and reliable, even if it's not really high status.
Man, the last thing I got from Creative was a SoundBlaster sound card, back when those were the top end.
@Drewtal: Drewtal +1. I've gotten these cards from Norton before and if you've got a 10.00 card in your wallet, spend it right away. Terms ARE clearly disclosed including maintenance costs, and for 10 lousy bucks why make your wallet one card thicker any longer than you need to?
It may be against the "guidelines" but I'll take the chance and blame the OP on this one.
Same here. I got one of these cards from Zyxel as a rebate and also used it right away. From the looks of the screenshot, the rebate processing company that Creative uses is the same one that Zyxel uses.
@geoffhazel: I'm with you on knowing the terms on these relatively new debit card rebates which are replacing rebate checks.
I used up several Norton debit cards received from Staples - even the Staples store personnel (who were reallyyy nice) had a hard time processing the cards.
I want the rebate checks back but I don't think that'll ever happen.
This is SOP now for most rebates. I've gotten rebates from Symantec, Staples, BitDender, etc. that come in the form of a prepaid visa card and they all come along with a peice of paper that says there is a 3 dollar maintence fee per month, but the fee is waved for the first 6 months.
Oh god. I feel bad, their products are kind of horrible. :( I bought one of the first zen photos (I think, it was when they were just starting colors and mine was purple) in 2005.. The software installed on my computer, but didn't work correctly. The player itself took a charge, but still wouldn't sync the music with the device. They told me I had to upgrade my USB ports, and so I did. (Yes, I went to a store and spent more money) It still didn't work, so I just finally gave up and returned it and got my money back with absolutely no hassle and went and bought a nifty Nikon Coolpix camera that worked and lasted 3 years. (From Circuit City actually...) I went to the mall I purchased it at about three weeks later, and the store I bought it from was closed for good.
I absolutely take the side of the OP. This whole deal is at best unethical and misleading, and at worst possibly illegal -- or at least one of those things that is "legal" now but is going to end up in a class action suit and become illegal soon.
Also, I do believe we need to read the fine print on important stuff, but if we read the fine print on every little piddling thing (do you all read the terms and agreements in full of every contest you enter online?), we'd never do anything else.
@Eldritch: I also cast my vote for the Sandisk Sansa series. I know of a lot of people who have them and they all swear by them.
@Eldritch: I have a Sansa E-series, and my partner has a Sansa Fuze. Both have proven to be reliable and enjoyable MP3 players with long battery life and good performance. Avoid the Sansa View.
@Bobby Smith: Really? I just got a Staples rebate last Thursday that was a paper check. I don't think it's correct to say "most rebates", maybe "some rebates". I got 2 rebates from OCZ and 1 from MSI early this spring and they were all paper checks as well.
Can't you people see it's a scam? It's got a printed expiration date, but is unusable before then. The expiration date is a flat out lie, and that puts this card in scam territory.
I recently got one of these for $20 as a Staples rebate. I hated it. Firstly, if you don't spend the whole amount in one transaction, you have to keep track of how much is left on it. I put part of a post-it on it to write the remaining amounts. Unless you know the exact amount on it, you can't use it as partial payment for a larger transaction. Secondly, there's the maintenance fees already discussed here. Thirdly, there's the inconvenience (again already mentioned) of yet another card in my wallet.
What I want to know and will find out when I get another one is: Can I take this to my bank and somehow get the money "off" of it? Cash in hand or deposited into an account is fine. Anyone here know about this already?
all I kno@Eldritch:
well the creative zen x-fi is currently the highest ranked flash mp3 player on CNET.
@Overheal: Yeah they sure did wear the spit out of that SoundBlaster thing, until PC manufacturers finally got their crap together and figured out how to make a chip and drivers. It was a big POS but it was the only thing that worked in windows and dos games.
I've found that they aren't all that easy to use either. I tried using a pre-paid visa rebate from corsair to pay for gas at the pump a couple different times and it didn't work.
Worked great for online pornography though, so got my $30 one way or the other :)
@Sam Moore: "What I want to know and will find out when I get another one is: Can I take this to my bank and somehow get the money "off" of it? Cash in hand or deposited into an account is fine. Anyone here know about this already?"
Some let you do this - you have to read the notices that come with the card. I've done three of these and one let you cash it at a bank and the others didn't. The fee is disclosed in the paperwork that accompanies the card.
I didn't like the rebate in a prepaid credit card at first, but now I just accept it as part of the game - if you play any game for money, you have to read the rules.
Think of it as a check and just "cash" it when you get it by using it immediately (You have to buy food regularly, so use it for that.) The maintenance fee doesn't kick in for 6 months, so there is plenty of time to use it - if it was a check, it would be "stale" in 6 months and banks are not supposed to cash it.
@Overheal:
My little Creative Zen+ has soldiered on perfectly for two years now.
Cost about the same as an iPod shuffle did, but had twice the storage, easy controls AND a screen.
Say what you will about their other products, but ye best beware of slandering their fine array of MP3 players in my presence.
@fatcop: The prepaid cards generally don't work in gas pumps, as it's too easy to scam the pump by pumping more gas than the card can pay for. I guess the pump can't see how much is on the card and set itself to shut off if it hits that amount.
@Shel Tozer-Kilts: So THAT'S why! Thanks for clearing up that mystery...
I used my $100 Citi Thank You Points gift card in one shot as soon as I received it, to buy a $100 gift card at my favorite store. Unlike the debit card, a gift card at a store can't charge fees or expire--at least in sunny California :) YMMV.
@Eldritch: I have never had any issues with my Zune nor have I heard of them shutting down? But I still prefer my Iriver over any other mp3 player out there. It got washed and dried and still keeps on ticking!
I do a lot of rebates, and I've now received several of these.
I'd rather have checks -- the cards are a pain.
Some stores know how to deal with two part transactions ($20 on my pre-paid debit card, the rest on another credit card), but a lot of them don't have a clue.
My recommendations on spending these fast and easy:
- Buy gas with them -- just ask the gas station attendant for only $20 (or whatever the value of the card is) worth of gas. (Don't try paying at the pump itself.) Then just use cash or another credit card as another transaction and fill your tank.
- Buy Amazon or Ebay gift certificates in values equal to the debit card. Or other gift cards that you'll likely use right away (Walmart? Target?). I used a $20 card and a $10 card to buy $30 worth of Amazon gift cards, then immediately used it for myself. (It's Amazon -- you can buy almost anything there.) Lots of stores are able to handle multiple gift certificates and extra payments above the gift certificates just fine (unlike multiple credit card payments.)
- Don't just spend here and there. I've did that with the first one I received. Now I've got a card with $0.03 on it. Spend the whole thing.
- Heck, probably a good way to give money to one of your favorite charities. $20 card? Go online to their site, give them $20. Feel good and take a tax deduction, too...
I've bought a ton of Creative's products over the year, but I doubt I'll be buying more if this is how they treat their customers.
@Span_Wolf: Because of the server(s) needed to store/retrieve the card balance. Not saying I agree, but this was my bank's rationale for "maintenance feeing" my savings account into oblivion. FWIW, I don't think this costs anything near $3/month.
@Asmordean: They're hardly innovators in this pursuit. They're waaaayyyy behind others like Comcast or Best Buy.
It costs far more for retailer to fulfill rebates with these cards. Why do they do it?
- The full value of the cards is rarely used. Even some change left on every card adds up to millions of dollars for the retailer.
- People forget about the card and never spend the money.
- People don't use them in time and the retailer receives a portion of the fees accrued.
Just what I needed another reason to NEVER buy another Creative Product. Way to Go Creative Marketing department good way to make people hate you and your company I score you a 9 out of 10, to get the full 10 you would have had to sacrifice a puppy.
@bbb111: Sure, but there's still the hassle factor of keeping track of the balance. And if you have 2 or 3 of these floating around, it becomes even more fun. Plus, if you treat it just like "free money" then you can end up wasting it on something you wouldn't buy otherwise.
What utter pointless crap. The whole point of a "Maintenance fee" is to be able to eventually move unspent credit into the "profits" column. It was started because of so many non-expiring gift cards in the late 90's which companies were stuck with being unable to report as "profit" since even though they hadn't been touched in five years, they were stuck with the fact that they had been sold same-as-cash. Some of those gift cards from the 90's are STILL unable to be claimed as profit, despite having transferred ownership (as in, what company is ultimately responsible for allowing the cards to be redeemed) two or three times- the ownership is transferred because legally, these companies are (or were) required to keep the cards alive, even if they were bought out, etc. Maintenance fees and expiry dates are simple solutions which save these companies a lot of hassle, and without them, gift cards would NOT exist today.
But it's one or the other. You charge a "maintenance fee", or add an expiry date. these are the two solutions to the "unclaimed" problem. They are entirely separate solutions. Charging a maintenance fee even when the card has an expiry date is just plain pointless theft.
@Sunny Yeung: Yup, me too. The interface is a bit clunky, certainly not as nice and intuitive as using an iPod, but I got my 4gb sansa for about $30, and its battery lasts a CRAZY long time.
@Eldritch: I had a Creative Micro Zen that I abused for years, and only quit working a few weeks after I soaked it in the rain. I replaced it, and bought 2 Zen Stones, which are very cool. Sadly, the Zen Micro's software will not work on Vista and they are no longer upgrading it. Pretty much a paper weight now. The Stone's work fine but use different software- which was another thing that irked me. Frustrated, I went ahead and bought an iPod. If Creative can't keep upgrading the required software and make all their stuff work off the same program, I do not have much use for them.
Aw, that sucks. I used to have a very faithful little Creative Nomad MP3 player, that served me valiantly until it's demise a few months ago. I was gonna get another Creative, so this makes me sad. I don't wanna get a Zune, what with them all shutting down at once that day, and the iPod is so finicky. Fucking click wheel. I need an mp3 player, don't do this to me Creative. D: