Shady rebates land Inphonic in hot water

Cellphone retailer Inphonic, which runs RadioShack's and Wirefly's online phone e-shops and has recently penned an agreement with Amazon to do the same, has been sued by Washington D.C.'s Attorney General for offering rebates requiring "onerous procedures" to fulfill. As we all know, rebates are often a boon for retailers and manufacturers because many buyers forget or don't care to fill out and mail the required forms, but it seems Inphonic has taken their rebate scam game to the next level, racking up over 2,000 complaints in the past three years. Besides unhelpful customer service representatives or automated messages (we usually have a rough time telling the difference), Inphonic is accused of making the terms of some of their rebates impossible to meet, like requiring 120 days of continuous phone activation on a rebate that expires in less than 120 days. "Any time you're dealing with millions of customers, as we are, there are going to be occasional concerns," says Inphonic's senior VP; we're assuming that by "occasional" he means "virtually anyone who attempts to claim a rebate from us."

[Via MobileTracker]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 3:41PM]

InPhonic published a statement about the AG lawsuit:

http://www.wireflyrebates.com/rebatestatement.html

It seems disingenuous to suggest that all rebates this company offers are rigged or made impossible to claim. From what I've read, InPhonic has done a lot to improve the whole system recently; most of these claims of shenanigans are years old by now.