The Federal Trade Commission announced settlements with two companies for playing games with consumer rebates. The FTC says InPhonic, a wireless phone company, sold packages to customers that included rebates, then never sent the customers the documents needed to get the rebates. And the FTC says Soyo, an electronics retailer, sent 95% of its rebate checks much later than promised.

Notice that the FTC's announcement came during a "Rebate Debate" workshop it hosted. The event was a discussion about how to keep the rebate industry operating properly. This brings us to a lecture on rebates. These two companies are not the only ones that play games with them. The entire rebate industry is profitable when consumers fail to redeem their rebates. So they don't often make it easy.

According to one recent survey, 60% of rebates are never redeemed. This article offers an excellent look at the industry. When you buy products with a rebate, be prepared: save your receipts, make copies of everything, and do exactly what the instructions say - that means send documents in correctly on time, then check your calendar and start making noise if you don't get your reimbursement by the date promised.

If your talks with the company don't go anywhere, you can file a complaint with AG Nixon. Our biggest such legal case was against a company called Consumers Trust, which promised 100% rebates on high-dollar items, then failed to deliver. The company agreed to refund almost $2 million to consumers, paid, then went bankrupt.