MacMall Sucks

MacMall sucks, I hate them, and I will never order anything from them again.

They're crooks and liars and worse, they provide bad service.

In an effort to spare you the entire long story, here's the synopsis. Several months ago, I ordered an iPod mini from MacMall. Their deal was to throw in not one, not two, but five accessories, plus shipping, for "free*". That asterisk, of course led to a little phrase that said, "after mail-in rebate". So you'd pay the $72.24 for all that junk up front, then send in rebate forms for all of it.

The deal was similar to this one that MacMall is running right now, as of this writing.


I know rebates are designed to scam people who aren't diligent enough to send them in, but for 72 bucks, I can be diligent. And I hardly cared about some of the stuff in this package deal, like a pair of $10 Logitech speakers, but since they'd (eventually) be "free", I figured what the hell.

Not to ruin the ending or anything, but guess what. I didn't get all my money back from those bastards. They gave me the works; long lead time before I got anything at all back; a rebate status webpage that didn't work; long hold times (totalling almost 2 hours across all the calls I made to them); bureaucratic stone-walling; rude service and ultimately, blaming me for not getting the rebate I deserved.

My key mistake was that I mailed in all six forms in one envelope. The instructions said not to do this, there were six of them, all going to the exact same address. And I called them to ask, first - this was before I knew the depths of their deception. Which was perfect for them, that I set myself up in this way. Some helpful and anonymous evil minion there assured me confidently that it would be perfectly fine to mail them all together, which was of course a lie. Fast forward to several months later, when I'm still $25 short on rebates, and that's what they finally shut me down for - sending all the forms together.

I've spent too much time on MacMall already in this lifetime, so let me wrap this up with Key Learning Points for you.

1. Don't ever buy anything from MacMall (or their sister site, PCMall)
   
2. If you choose to violate point #1, don't expect to get all your rebates back. Ever.
   
3. If you choose to violate points #1 and #2, realize that they are working their hardest to screw you. Be sure to get the name and phone number of every MacMall/PCMall flunky you ever talk to there.