(Hello again) Netgear

As much as I've spent on Netgear stuff in the past couple of months, you'd think it might bother them just a bit to stiff me on a $40 rebate. But nope, buying almost $2K of their gear since Christmas wasn't sufficient reason for them to honor their recent rebate on Gigabit switches.

What really got my attention was the reason for disallowing the rebate: "Invalid Purchase Location", given that one switch was bought at Best Buy, and the other at Amazon.com, from whose Web site I printed the rebate form in the first place!

Netgear hereby joins my growing list of firms that won't get future business

Repeat business is much more important to company survival than whatever can be saved by cheating customers out of rebates. People are very good at remembering who has cheated them. And over the decades almost all such firms have eventually gone under.

Update: I just got an update Email from Netgear, saying they have approved my $20 rebate. I suspect that means they have reconsidered and now agree one of the two places I bought from is an authorized dealer. Nice of them to figure that out, since I had no way to contact them and ask them to do so other than by updating an Amazon review, which I did do. So thanks may also be due to whoever at Amazon read that review before posting it.

Either way, it's really good news, as I was NOT looking forward to having to find an alternative supplier for the products I've been getting from Netgear over the years.