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This blog should, I hope, serve as a cautionary tale for anyone who buys a phone from T-Mobile and expects that mailing in a rebate form will automatically result in them receiving a check.

If you are so inclined, you can scroll down and read all the gory details of all the fun I had with Young America Corporation—the rebate fulfillment company used by T-Mobile. In summary, they lied about what I had sent to them, tried to wear me down with slow or bizarrely irrelevant responses, and, finally, subjected me to profanity-laden abuse.

In retrospect, I now realize that I could have ended this in December. That was when I received the letter from them that told me I was not going to get a check. Since I had fastidiously kept a record of what I had sent, I should have submitted a complaint to the Better Business Bureau as soon as the letter arrived. I did that in February and got the rebate check within a few days.

I strongly recommend contacting the Better Business Bureau if a rebate fulfillment company ever tells you it didn't receive materials or asks for more time. (Young America Corporation did both.)

A word about rebates. It doesn't take a genius to work out why companies offer them: They want to lure you with their "only $20 with mail-in rebate" prices, and then hope you either forget to mail in the rebate form or make a mistake that you can't be bothered to rectify. This might not be a way of making money with which we'd all be comfortable, but there's nothing fundamentally dishonest about it.

But what are we to make of companies like TCA Fulfillment Services? This is a passage from a Business Week article:

TCA Fulfillment Services published a "Rebate Redemption Guide" for its corporate customers several years ago. It cited the low redemption rates that companies could expect after hiring TCA: just 10% for a $10 rebate on a $100 product, and just 35% for a $50 rebate on a $200 product. "If you are using another fulfillment company, add 20% to these redemption rates," says the chart.

Now, they obviously weren't suggesting that those other fulfillment companies were in the habit of sending rebate checks to people not entitled to them. The meaning is clear enough: TCA will save money for its clients by refusing to send checks to people who are entitled to them. TCA Fulfillment Services is no longer in business, but I wonder if Young America Corporation is picking up where they left off. I have no doubt whatsoever that they received everything they needed in order to process my rebate check. I also firmly believe that the long delays before responding to my questions were quite deliberate; I was supposed to lose patience and go away. At one point, they even asked for more time, which I gather is a classic tactic used by the seedier fulfillment companies.

The good news is that you can avoid all the hassle I have endured. If you buy a phone from T-Mobile, simply submit a complaint to the Better Business Bureau as soon as you get a communication from Young America that isn't "here is your rebate check." You'll save yourself a lot of trouble.