Hey Brett, What Crawled Up Your Bunghole? WAS LAC Using an FM Transmitter/MP3Player: BAD!

[Tyson Varosyan]

Maybe I am missing something here, but all I saw was Brett explaining the BS
involved with mail-in rebates and their abuse. I didn't think anything in
there was leftist or political. His statement was to the point and although
it had nothing to do with Audis directly, it had to do with something that
Audi owners deal with and may encounter while shopping for add-ons to their
cars.

That being said, my company(s) (am I a corporatist now?) buy about $800,000
of product a year - roughly 60% from local vendors, 38% online and the rest
are an occasional necessity of having to run out to the local OfficeMax,
CompUSA, Fry's, or Best Buy. Here we often run into mail-in rebates. Over
the years, we have probably submitted $5000 worth of rebates and the only
ones that EVER came back were 2 $40 rebates from Microsoft. We have been
stiffed by HP, APC, Dell and many other so many times, that it is not worth
the effort to jump through all the hoops, waste time and money to send the
stupid things in. 

I have a friend that plays the rebate game and does it well. He sends all
rebates in, marks his Outlook Calendar and follows up with EVERY SINGLE ONE.
He told me that he almost never received a rebate without having to check up
on it. He does often get 2 and even 3 rebates sent to him by mistake when he
becomes the squeaky wheel. This just shows that the companies have no
systems for processing the rebates because they know that 50% of the people
out there will never send them in and of those that do, 90% will forget
about them. I have no time for it.

As a consumer I fight back. First, I support the American spirit of
competition. If I can find the identical product online and I am not in a
hurry, I will get it there. If CompUSA wants to rip me off, they will have
their chance when the online vendor mis-ships my order or when I need
something NOW. Second, I ignore rebates all together. If an HP printer is
$200 with a $50 rebate and a Cannon printer is $180 and all other specs are
equal, I am getting the Cannon. Third, although the vast majority of what we
buy is manufactured overseas (with computer equipment there is no other
choice), we maintain a strong ethic when it comes to anti-globalization.
When a customer whom we have been working with for 4 years asked that we
help them implement a Voice Over IP system so that they may move their call
center to Mexico, we made it a stipulation in our contract that all current
employees working in Seattle would be offered jobs with same hours, pay,
benefits and location at the same company.

I still buy Audi and Mitsubishi. They are superior in quality and domestic
manufactures cannot touch them. Also, both come from markets where fair
wages and benefits are paid. I would like to see more of a 1:1 import/export
quota with Germany, Japan and other countries, but you can't have it all...

The bottom line is that I did not see anything ultra-political or offensive
in Brett's post (if there is something that I am missing please let me
know). He stated a fact that corporations abuse mail-in rebates to the
detriment of consumers. That is true in every aspect. Your reaction was
offensive, off-base and far more political. If you were just having a bad
day, I think an apology is in order. If you are just a right-wing extremist,
with the paranoid passion to see everything being political and ripping into
people like this, please do not let the door hit you on your way out.

For curiosity sake, how much money have you sent to Audifans? It's just that
you mentioned that a few times and I am curious.

Only comment that I have for Brett is that you are mistaken about the tax
aspect. When buying online, you must still pay your local state the sales
tax that you would otherwise pay had you bought the product locally. Nobody
does, but us in the business world get nailed for it when we get audited :)
 
Tyson Varosyan
Technical Manager, Uptime Technical Solutions LLC.
tyson at up-times.com
www.up-times.com
206-715-TECH (8324)

UpTime/OnTime/AnyTime 

-----Original Message-----
From: quattro-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:quattro-bounces at audifans.com] On
Behalf Of Alex Kowalski
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 11:10 PM
To: Mark R; quattro at audifans.com
Subject: Re: Hey Brett,What Crawled Up Your Bunghole? WAS LAC Using an FM
Transmitter/MP3Player: BAD!

Ok.  Here's the honey.  I'm sure he's basically a good human being, I
promise that I won't shoot him in the impending civil war.  So here goes:

Brett, honey:  PLEASE, please, with sugar on top, and chocolate cake with
cordial cherries and cheesecake with ice cream and pooh-bear honeypots and
honeysuckle goodies and candy corns and Smarties and Twix bars and all kinds
of other evil, capitalist treats:

PLEASE, by the grace of whatever God motivates you in your hours of need,
PLEASE stop this reflexive leftist ranting.  I can read, and I do read, as
many Lefty blogsites and websites as I need to, including Common Dreams,
Democracy NOW!, Daily Kos, ZNet, and many, many others.  I read them and I
retch and I respond to them as best I can, but I had hoped for a long time
now that at the very least the Quattro List was a place where people who
shared an affection for Audis from around the world, regardless of their
political views, could find a safe haven and more importantly, a great
resource to keep these wonderful cars running and on the road -- even if we
want to run some of our fellows of the road because of their political
beliefs.

BTW for all of you who would like to read some of my political rantings, you
can do so over at the world's greatest Republican/Conservative weblog,
Redstate.com.

I can live with having Brett in the same state as myself -- my vote will
cancel his and vice versa.  But what I cannot stand is using what should be
an apolitical forum to advance a political agenda.  Like it or not,
capitalism is really great.  People should read this article from this
month's Atlantic if they doubt that.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200603/capitalism

We're wary of capitalism, and sometimes we're downright hostile about it --
but we control it, after all, and it HAS produced the greatest material
well-being in the history of humanity.  Enough of my counterrant.