Based on the most recent CyberRebate-related thread (which is now locked) in the DVD Bargains Forum, jonathan.e sounded like he was discouraging shopping at CyberRebate. I was wondering if this was just his position, or if it goes for DVDTalk as a whole. Personally, I think it would be great if DVDTalk discouraged shopping at CyberRebate. (I wish more bargain websites would do the same.) There's definitely something shady about a company that says the suggested retail price of a DVD is $170. Just wondering what DVDTalk's policy is on this.

Wow, I thought you were exaggerating, but I just checked it out... "The Matrix" - $170

I have never used CyberRebate but I don't think there is anything "shady" going on. Think about it, you pay them $170 for a DVD. They send you the DVD and put the $170 into some high-yield account and make more than enough money in interest to pay for the DVD. After the set time limit, they pay your money back gladly because they have enjoyed the interest off of your $170 and made a pretty good profit.

NO, your $170 isn't making them rich but yours and a few thousand others are.

the problem with this idea is that they can not earn enough money from putting your money in a money market account to pay for your dvd in 2 years(who is paying above 5% per year right now)at 10%per year they would need to hold onto your money for a whole year to break even.

so the question is how can they make money.

i get it do not pay too many people back and you are very profitable. You only need a few suckers who actually get paid then the rest of the suckers get screwed. they paid well when they were charging 25 dollars for a dvd. now they want $170. i think now the screwing people begins. I hope Dvdtalk locks every thread about cyberrebates until cyberrebates goes belly up or is sued to death.

this is a major problem waiting to happen and Dvdtalk should not help people get ripped off.

From the amount of people posting about their bad experiences with cyberrebate in the one&only open cyberrebate thread in the bargains forum, isn't it clear that shopping there is too risky? There's also a thread over in the store forum where someone's complaining about cyberrebate too....

I don't think that's a legitimate bargain to post in this forum.

Well, as I said earlier, it isn't your money they are making a profit off of. It is the accumulation of thousands of orders that is bringing in the profit. $10,000.00 makes more in interest than $100 and they don't have to pay back all of their customers all at once.

Don't get me wrong... I haven't convinced myself that this operation is 100% on the level... that is why I have never purchased from them. However, there are always possibilities of how the site can be legit.

I have actually talked to people that have purchased from CyberRebate and they had a very good experience but I think that with all the Internet "start-ups" getting into the action one month and then folding the next that it probably isn't a good idea to take such a risk.

I would hate to spend a couple hundred or even a thousand dollars at this site only to have them go bankrupt before I get my money back. CyberRebate could file Chapter 11 and then their customers could be out in the cold.

But if DVD-Talk is to take a position against CyberRebate then they should also not associate with companies like MovieSource (the one that does the random $1.99 DVD deals). Come on, you can typically find a DVD cheaper elsewhere but if you order from MovieSource you take a gamble that you will be the one to get it for $1.99. Wasn't there a big stink about MovieSource a while back and people were asking Geoff not to support them anymore?

the people who had good experiences bought early on when they charged full msrp. the risk was smaller. now cyberrebates is charging 10 times the cost of an item. The math i gave as an example is accurate. more people does not change the math. even if they hold everyones money for a year they will not even break even with the cost of the items they are selling. not counting the cost they have to do business. the only way they make money is refusing to pay people anything back. which is what they are starting to do.

this is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. take others money to pay someone else back. they always fail because they run out of suckers and the house of cards falls down.

I closed a duplicate Cyberebate thread and moved the other (which had become more of a discusion of the ethics and reliability of the offer) to Store. My own view is that handing over 10 times the value of a product in the hope of getting it back a couple of months later does not constitute a deal as I define it.

Very well said, Jonathan e.

Read this article on CyberRebate: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1278-210-4918026-1.html

I think it would be advisable if people looked at other places to do their online shopping.

Geoff

thanks for the article link Geoff, it was good to see Brian Livingston write it as I read his regular column in InfoWorld every week.

wow that sucks

Not mentioned in the article is that if you use your credit card to purchase The Matrix DVD at $170, you consented to the purchase. After you receive the The Matrix DVD and don't bother to return it to the seller as being in unsatisfactory condition, you have now accepted the merchandise.

Thus, the credit card law arguably no longer protects you because you did receive the product that you ordered at the correct specified price of $170. The credit card law does NOT guarantee that you can reverse charges if you didn't get a bargain. It protects you when you don't receive the merchandise as ordered. You ordered a $170 DVD and you got it.

So, it is quite possible that one day, there will be enough outstanding non-refunded orders out there that Cyberrebate will say, time to close shop. And those $40,000,000 of orders needing refund cheques will be lost to the consumers who agreed to pay. Would the credit card company pay off those reversed charges? Well, I was reading posts somewhere that a number of people who didn't get rebate cheques have tried that recource, and the credit card company didn't help them out because they did receive the merchandise that they ordered at the price that they ordered it at....