Hello John. Hello!

Still no response from John.

I decide it's time to wake him up:

Please respond to this.

I called you in December and you told me to send a copy of my purchase confirmation e-mail. I did that immediately but have heard nothing from you.

That did the trick. Here's his reponse:

Dear Rob,

Thank you for contacting the Rebate Centre. I have searched our database using the information provided to us in your e-mail. At the present time, I do not show any record of your rebate resubmission in our files. Please be advised that a rebate resubmission can take up to 28 days to appear in our database from the date it is received at our facility.

Please allow a full 6 weeks to elapse from the day you mailed your resubmission to us.

Sincerely,
John
Rebate Centre Representative

I know what you're thinking. That's what he said in his last e-mail, right?

Wrong!

Look again and you'll notice the cunning substitution of "resubmission" for "submission".

This is like dealing with a robot.

Testing, testing...

OK, it's been a while now since I resubmitted my order confirmation e-mail. And, by now, I'm sensing that having a record of communications with these people might be a good idea. So I use their website to submit a question instead of calling them. The website has a form for all my identifying information, plus a comments section. I use the comments section to explain what has happened thus far.

Here is the response I got:

Dear Rob,

Thank you for contacting the Rebate Centre. I have searched our database using the information provided to us in your e-mail. At the present time, I do not show any record of your rebate submission in our files. Please be advised that a rebate submission can take up to 28 days to appear in our database from the date it is received at our facility.

Please allow a full 6 weeks to elapse from the day you mailed your submission to us.

Sincerely,
John
Rebate Centre Representative

Two thoughts occur to me:

• What kind of crap are they using for software? Why on earth does he have to search for anything? After I have entered my details in my web browser, does he really have to enter them into a separate system? Why on earth isn't he just presented automatically with my case as soon as he is assigned to it?

• My second thought leads from the first. With imbeciles like "John" working in customer service, you really need as much automation as possible.

  John is quite a star. He gets an e-mail, which contains everything I entered on the form. He then searches for my details, but makes a mistake and finds nothing. At this point, most intelligent life forms would think "I've found nothing, but the customer indicates that he has already been in contact with us, so he must be in the system. Let me double-check that." Not our John. His job was done when he tried the search and couldn't find anything. On with the script and bring on the next case.

This is starting to get annoying. I respond thus:

That's strange because I have already had a letter from you telling me that I won't be getting a rebate.

The significance of this seems lost on John. He doesn't bother to respond.

Has my rebate arrived already?

Wow! A letter from the T-Mobile rebate people. That was quick! Let's open it up and put my rebate check in a safe place!

Or maybe not.

I can't believe it. No store receipt=no rebate. Do you really mean to tell me that their system isn't set up to issue rebates for phones bought on the web?

I scream.

I kick the cat.

I cancel Christmas.

But nothing seems to work.

No store receipt=no rebate.

I call the 1-877 number to explain that I don't have a store receipt because I didn't BUY THE PHONE FROM A %&*%$# STORE!

Only I am actually quite calm. I expect this to be sorted out easily enough.

A smarmy 15-year old kid takes my call. He's reading from a script. Apparently it's no problem that I don't have a store receipt. Valid alternatives include blah blah….

I interrupt to remind him that I've already said that I sent in my order confirmation e-mail.

Oh dear. This isn't in the script.

"Oh well, we didn't receive it, sir."

Fine. He tells me to send a copy of the order confirmation e-mail to the original submission address. He also tells me to contact them shortly after resubmitting it to confirm that they have received it.

Rebate paperwork

Now I just have to attend to the paperwork for the rebate. Seems straightforward enough. I just need the following:

• The bar code from the box in which my phone was shipped.
• Proof of purchase.
• The rebate form.

Bar code: no problem. Rebate form: made ultra-easy by the T-Mobile rebate website, which auto-generates it. Proof of purchase needs a little initiative as I didn't buy the phone in a store and so don't have a store receipt. No problem, though: I'll just send a copy of my order confirmation e-mail.

Here's what I submitted to the T-Mobile rebate shysters. (Whoops! I'm getting ahead of myself—nothing bad's happened…yet!)

It's arrived!

Hurrah! The phone has arrived! It's small, very light, and a battery charge lasts longer than 3½ minutes. I'm so happy!

Ordering the new phone

It's time to retire the ancient Nokia 3390. Let's see what T-Mobile is selling at the moment. Oooh... this looks nice:

By the time the $30 mail-in rebate is deducted, this Nokia 6030 will be very cheap indeed. A few mouse-clicks and my new phone is working its way through T-Mobile's system and onto my porch. Hooray!