Texas Energy Star Appliance Rebate
filed in OT, rants on Apr.28, 2010
After reading this – please read my latest post on the matter!
Here’s some more info on this giant fiasco put on by Susan Combs’ people at the State of Texas Comptroller’s Office.
After many frustrating hours attempting to get an appliance rebate, we failed – or so we thought. We did get on the “waiting list” for a refrigerator rebate, but as far as we could tell, we were unsuccessful in getting our washer rebate.
We called the 877 number given to try to verify if we got a rebate or not. After searching, the lady on the other end informed us that we did NOT get on the rebate list.
Well, that sucks! We had put up with a leaky washer for several months hoping to take advantage of the rebate – now that we had been informed that we did NOT get the rebate, we went shopping and bought us a new washing machine. Sure is nice to wash clothes without water leaking all over the laundry room floor.
In yesterday’s mail we got the paperwork for the “waiting list” refrigerator rebate. Wait! What’s this? Another envelope from the same place? What could this be?
Alas, it’s the paperwork for washer rebate that we qualified for – this is a real rebate form, not just a “waiting list” form.
But wait – as mentioned, when we were told we did not make it on the list, we went out and purchased a new washer – on April 10th. To qualify for the rebate, the purchase date had to be between April 16th and April 25th. The end date has now been extended – too bad they didn’t change the start date as well.
Every thing is BIGGER in Texas – and this Energy Star Appliance Rebate program fiasco put on by the State of Texas is growing BIGGER – likely to be the biggest FAIL ever.
Government Mediocrity
April 28th, 2010 on 5:16 pm
I work at the Comptroller’s office with the Texas Trade Up Appliance Rebate program and would like to better understand what happened with your clothes washer rebate. Please contact me.
April 28th, 2010 on 6:00 pm
Hi,
We never could get through for the washer rebate or so we thought.
The sad thing is we were both trying to get in via the internet from different locations – I was in the process of filling out the washer rebate form on the web when my wife called and said that she got in, so I stopped working on the washer rebate and started in trying to get one for a refrigerator.
After the dust settled, we never got an email confirming our washer rebate. I did get through for the waiting list on the refrigerator and was able to print it that day.
Digging around on twitter, I asked @PowerfulSmart for a way to verify if we were on the list or not – they referred me to this page https://www.txrebates.com/Status.aspx
But that only allows checking if you have a Web Submission ID – which my wife did not get due to the site issues. So I twittered around and found the #txrebate list and found the 877 # people were using to verify if they were on the list.
We called the 877 # to verify if we were on the list and they told use we were NOT.
So we mumbled and grumbled then decided there was no sense in waiting for April 16th to roll around to make our purchase (we might even beat the crowd) – and we purchased a new Energy Star washer on the 10th.
Yesterday (4/27) we got the two forms in the mail – one for the reserved rebate on the washer and one for a waiting list reservation for a refrigerator.
The problem now is that even though we actually got through and qualified for a rebate, our purchase is outside the allowed period – y’all extended the allowed period, but that doesn’t help our purchase that was made prior to the start of the event.
Given all the troubles with the outfit in Minnesota (bad choice, but that’s hindsight – I just hope you help other states learn from our mistake) – I think if someone is qualified for a rebate and the purchase was made after that, then the rebate should be honored – but I would think that since we’re in this situation.
regards,
Mike
April 28th, 2010 on 6:04 pm
If you want to email me a way to contact you, I’d be happy to get my wife to call you. You can email to “admin” at this domain name and I will get it.
or contact me via twitter – ubooched
regards,
Mike
April 29th, 2010 on 6:35 am
To add insult to injury – yesterday, we got an email from you in response to our feedback form entry that states we are qualified for the rebate and includes the web submission ID.
You also say in that email:
“Because you did not receive a confirmation at the time of registering, you may have unknowingly applied for multiple rebates in a single appliance type or category. …”
OR like in our case – (a poetic rewording here) “Because you did not receive a confirmation at the time of registering, you may have purchased your appliance earlier than the program period thinking you did not have a rebate.”
regards,
Mike