The Hundred Dollar Rebate that Almost Wasn’t but, thanks to the Boys, was

The nice company who sold us our Internet router (up front cost: $100) gave us a $100 rebate form to fill out and return. Rebate forms are, I’m sure, a big source of revenue for big fat Internet service providers. On the pretense of giving you a modem for “free,” they give you a rebate form which you have to fill out in just the right way at just the right time sent to just the right place — or you can kiss your hundred bucks goodbye.

The “deal” we got included a $100 rebate form we had to fill out and mail in within 90 days. I read the instructions carefully. They’re always very specific. “Include the original rebate form, a copy of the sales receipt for the modem, the UPC symbol cut off the box, addressed to such and such. Offer only good from such and such date until midnight on such and such date only.” The first rebate form they gave us had dates that were in the past. I had to go back and get another one.

I’m sure companies who offer “rebates” are well aware there will always be some lazy, procrastinating, no-count slackers who just won’t be able to get it together enough to gather all the required information and send their bloody rebate forms in on time. Thus such companies profit mightily from calculating the Mode of Ignorance Factor.
Instead of immediately gathering everything on the list and mailing it in, this no-count slacker demoted the task to “later” and then forgot where I had put the darn UPC symbol, which I so carefully cut out of the corner of the box with my Stanley brand box cutter which some absent-minded mechanic had left on my engine block many years ago.

Weeks went by, to the tune of “almost ninety days.” The rebate form, copies of the form and the sales receipt floated around from my backpack to the car seat to the dining room table to the sofa to the bookcase to various piles of “doable stuff” I sorted through occasionally. Then yesterday I decided to mail that darn rebate form in once and for all. I found the form, made sure the date was correct, made sure I had copies of that and copies of my original sales receipt, but I couldn’t find the UPC symbol anywhere. I looked in the car. I looked on the dining room table. I looked in all my piles of doable stuff. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I began to get very upset, thinking how there was a hundred dollars out there that was rightfully ours but that we would not be able to recoup unless we had he original UPC symbol off the side of the box.

And all because I didn’t mail the thing in immediately. What an advertisement for the mode of goodness. “Look at this man. He’s practically at the point of tears. Why? He didn’t mail in his rebate form in a timely manner, and now he’s out a hundred bucks. Don’t let this happen to you. Try the mode of goodness now, for thirty days, and see what a difference it makes in your life. . .”

Then I remembered to ask the Boys. Whenever my wife or I lose something, we remind each other to ask our Gaura Nitai Deities (nicknamed “the Boys”) for help. We go to Them face to face, explain the situation, acknowledge that we’re foolish and helpless without Their help, that They’re omniscient, and the best Friends of all living beings, they know exactly where (whatever lost item) is, so won’t They please help us? I prayed to the Boys that way, and asked that They intervene within the next ten minutes, so I could get back to the other important work I was trying to do on Their behalf.

Then I went out again, like a drug sniffing dog, to search the car, the dining room, the sofa, the various piles for the third time, determined to flush out the missing piece of my rebate puzzle. Then, as if a little trapdoor had suddenly opened in my mind and let a stream of semi-dusty light stream through, I remembered I had stuffed a stack of Internet service-related papers in the original modem router box itself on the top shelf of the closet. I moved toward the box like a hungry man moving toward a sandwich. There it was, the envelope containing the lousy UPC symbol. I lay down and offered thanks again and again. It’s a wonder I didn’t fall asleep there, mode of ignorance poster child that I am.