Mail in rebates.

[ShadowTiger]

Heck. A few months ago, before I purchased my GameCube, they had an offer for $50 dollars back when you buy a system and a game. (That's a summary though.) Then after thorough research, we discovered that you had to buy 5 games instead of just 1. And a new system instead of a used one. We would have spent more than we had saved. That's just nasty. Anyway, long story short, have you ever used a rebate?

[TedHead]

I got a $120 USB computer steering wheel for only $40 after the mail-in and instant rebates :D

[ShadowTiger]

Wow. That's insane, Tedhead. I mean, insane in the good way. Congrats! I hope that you enjoy your purchase. :D

As for other stories, my father clipped something out of a best buy paper the other day. Apparently, you could get 2 sets of a sum of money off of a CD-burner. And upon reading further into it, we discovered that each set makes you show the bar code of it, and since you can only send in the bar code once, you're out of luck. Don't you just hate it when they do that?

[Beldaran]

I got my Xbox DVD adapter for free via a microsoft rebate.

[The Savior]

I love rebates. I've gotten a minidisk player free, 300+ CDRs free, and a Logitech MX700 mouse for 14 bucks. Those are just the big ticket things though, I've gotten much more than that.

[gdorf]

I actually rarely use them, but I always have the intent to. :)

The only time I've really used them was went I bought the parts for my brother's computer. We ended up saving about $150.

[MottZilla]

Some rebates are great. Along long time ago we could buy 100 floppy disks for 1$. A penny a disk ain't bad. ;)

[vegeta1215]

I got a $25 rebate for Norton Systems works 2000 a few years ago. And I also got a $25 rebate on 256 megs of PC100 RAM (originally $50). That was a steal.

Rebates are great, but you just have to make sure you're eligible and you have all the right stuff to send in.

[War Lord]

The Best Buy one would have been fine.
Each CD set would have had a bar code, and if it didn't, you can photocopy it. Best Buy is excellent when dealing with rebates. I've spent thousands at best buy, and never had a problem with the many rebates I've used.