I recently purchased an OCZ power supply from Newegg and it had a $30 rebate on it. I received it within 5 days. Now sometimes, I will be lazy and not get around to submitting my rebates right away, but I am used to having 30 days to get everything in the mail. So it was just this past weekend that I got around to filling out the rebate form when I saw I had 12 days (including weekends) from date of invoice to submit! I have never seen such a short time to submit before!

First, I understand it is on me to abide by the wording on the rebate. But seeing as this is such a short time, do they even account for delays in shipping? What if something is on back-order and you don't receive it in time to meet the rebate deadline? Given that I didn't receive my order for 5 days, I effectively only had a week to submit. If you take out the time to ship, I did actually get it in within the 12 days.

Can I expect a "denied"? Do I have any recourse?

Are there other vendors out there notorious for this?

OCZ is known for having short postmark dates...on average about 10 days including weekends. This is why it is important to get it in on time. Shipping delays and backordered items are not their problem. I usually cancel the item if it is on backorder...which usually means they ran out of stock and you didn't get in on the deal in time anyway.

Good luck! I think you'll be ok.

I am wondering if there are any rules/regulations around rebate requirements. As I mentioned, I had never seen 12 days to postmark before and thought that was kind of short. Is there a rule on just how short a time frame they can set? Obviously, if I saw a rebate that needed to be postmarked within 1 day of purchase I would steer clear of it. But it would also be obvious that this company was setting requirements that the majority, if not all, of the cases could not be met. This is an extreme example, but even with 10 or 12 days, there are some cases where a product may be delayed in shipping and the customer may receive the product after the specified postmark-submission date and be SOL on their rebate.

I am purchasing a product for a particular price that happens to include a rebate. I fully expect that rebate to have "reasonable" requirements that can be met. If I have a certain time frame to submit that rebate (which includes info (UPC) from the product), it would seem reasonable that this time period would start from the time the product is within hand; the customer has no control over shipping delays, back orders, etc.

"Reasonable" can certainly be ambiguous, so I am just wondering where the rules, if any, are.