My Instinct Was Wrong? Right!

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

After reading this – please read my latest post on the matter!

Even our much hyped Appliance Rebate Program – Energy Efficiency Powerful Smart for Texans.

The State announced this program several months ago. It’s purpose is to entice Texans to buy new Energy Star appliances with over $20 million in rebates using money from the U.S. Governement.

This program has been hyped up to coincide with Earth Day, April 25. Consumers can “reserve” up to two rebates per household on various qualifying appliances from dishwashers, washers, hot water heaters, refrigerators, air conditioners and heat pumps.

After being postponed, consumer reservations started today April 7 via a toll free number or their website. Purchases of the qualifying appliance have to be done during the 10 day period from April 16 – April 25, 2010 (Earth Day).

Perfect! We need a new washer – have for a few months now, but we’ve been putting up with the 12 year old leaking beast waiting to take advantage of this program.

We’re still not sure which model we’ll buy, but a new washer is $500 minimum – the rebate is $180 – that’s a 36% savings. Add in the $75 recycling fee available and it’s now over 50% savings – well worth the hassles of waiting. See, everything is BIGGER in Texas!!

Reservations started today at 7 am. I’ve been trying to get through to the website since 7:02 am and have been calling the toll free number constantly since 7:30 am.

According to their Twitter page

“Unprecedented high traffic”, “high volume”

I’m not really sure what they expected, but obviously they are under-prepared. I’m sure the various phone companies, both land based and cellular appreciate this program too.

It’s 3 hours later and I still do not have our reservation. The only time I have been able to get a page to load did offer some hope though – of the over $20 million available, I was just able to see that only 3% of it had been reserved – only $19 mil to go!

So as you can see Everything is NOT bigger in Texas – at least not the phone system and web server infrastructure to support this program nor the Texas State Government’s ability to foresee this coming – given all the hype leading up to this event, like a parade up Main St., it should have been hard to miss.

On a side note – I learned a long time ago that “Absolutes are always wrong” – the word “everything” is an absolute, so I guess I should have known.

UPDATE: 11:22 am – well, it’s been almost 4.5 hours now with me constantly trying the website and the phone # with no success. Their twitter page only wants to discuss how many hits and phone calls they are getting. The website has been taken down twice now, and currently just goes in circles – I get the main page to load – click the link to get my washer rebate reservation and after several minutes, I end up back on the main page that I was just on.

$255 in 5 hours would equate to $51 per hour – this is rapidly becoming a losing proposition considering I can’t get any of my normal work done.

The options given since the website is “temporarily unavailable” are to call, watch them on twitter, and sign up for email updates – all of which I have done or am still doing – all of which get me no closer to my rebate reservation.

When I do get something other than a busy signal, it’s a recording of a rather annoying female voice saying “We are experiencing unusually high call volumes, please try your call again later. Goodbye”

Someone is obviously getting through as we’re now up to 10% of the funds reserved.

can you say FUBAR?

UPDATE: 12:30 pm
I’ve gotten to the captcha screen several times but can’t get past that until now. And my wife just called and said she was able to get through. So, I stopped entering the info for the washer rebate since she was gong to do that one. We also want to purchase a 2nd refrigerator, so I’ll start over and try that one.

I think probably this whole process would have been more efficient if they had required us to drive to Austin and stand in line single file out in the blazing sun until we got up to the front to reserve our rebate in person.

UPDATE: IN THE END
Wow, what a joke. after trying for another hour, I was not able to get into the system quick enough to get an actual rebate reservation for the frig. I was able to get on the waiting list for that. My wife gets home and we check her email – no email from the state regarding the washer rebate – ugh. So now we’re not even sure if we got that – which was the whole point of this futlie excercise in the first place.

This is LOGIC at it’s best (NOT!) – especially for a company that prides itself on customer service.

SETUP: We were recently in the game to purchase a salt water generator for our above ground pool – we had decided on the Intex brand as it was cheap enough, has a 2 year warranty, and should save us tons of money on pool chemicals. The manufacturer’s website says Walmart was a retailer and so the story begins.

We dive into walmart.com – wow, they do have it – crap, it shows to be an “online only”, “not available in stores” item. But the price is good – I can get it on eBay and save $2 over the walmart.com price. Walmart.com even has this free “ship to store” program that save any freight costs – cool.

We head off to Walmart to get some other stuff for the change to our pool – and hey, look at that, there are 5 of the salt water systems on the shelf – not carried in stores huh – yeah right. But wait – the price here is $40 higher than Walmart.com.

PROBLEM: Well – so now my choices are 1) pay $40 more and get it now, or 2) go home, order it online, wait 7-10 days for them to “ship to store”, come back here and pick it up.

I grab one – take it up to customer service – surely logic will prevail and I can take one home with me at the lower walmart.com price.

I’m standing in line with this box under my arm waiting my turn with the CS rep. I finally get to the counter, whip out my Instinct and access the item online to show the CS rep the cheaper price online and that it says it’s NOT available in stores. She says, yes sir, the only way you can get that price is to order it online – then some mumbo jumbo about how different divisions of Walmart do not compete with each other – WTF does that mean anyway?

SOLUTION: We bought two – one online which will be here in 10 days or so, and one from the store that we brought home over the weekend.

I’m working on getting this thing hooked up to our pool and hope to be enjoying it long before the online purchase arrives at my local store. When it does arrive – we’ll go pick it up at the “ship to store” counter in the back of the store – cart it up to customer service at the front of the store and get a refund on the in store purchase.

So, we get the better price without the wait. Walmart gets lots of extra paperwork.

LOGIC at it’s best.

And for those of you that own or care for pools – not just above ground pools – we found a great forum – these guys have the science of pool chemistry down to a Tee – http://TroubleFreePool.com – lots of great info, a sweet pool chemical calculator – tell it what your levels are, and where you want them to be and how big your pool is, and it will calculate what you need to add to get the chemistry in line. Definitely worth the $30 to be a lifetime supporter – if I had found this site years ago, I would have saved much more than that.