After all of the time I will spend filling out rebate forms, this box of stuff certainly isn’t free.

Just a quick story and reminder that “Free After Rebate” is far from free…

I recently applied for an American Airlines credit card which offered a 50,000 mile bonus after spending $2000. In order to meet that spending threshold, I decided that I would order a bunch of free-after-rebate stuff and resell it on Amazon, possibly earning a small profit in the process. Well, after receiving all of my plunder, I discovered that it wasn’t really going to be worth it to sell my items on Amazon (the prices for everything dropped like a rock, probably because there are 1000 other people selling the same free-after-rebate items.) To add insult to injury, I now have 15 rebate forms to fill out and track over the next month.

Oh well, lesson learned. If that’s the stupidest thing I do this year, I’ll be happy.