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Comment by OrangeMonkey | Hacker News Reader

Most "sales promotions" in the 90's were little more than fraud.

Most of us remember the period where almost everything in computer stores were "free after rebate." "Emachine 1997 model FREE AFTER REBATE", "Pack of 50 CDR FREE AFTER REBATE".

The rebate involved you filling out a form with the original proof of purchase, sending it off, and either never hearing from them again or having it denied. "Sorry, wrong receipt, send us the real one" but it was already gone.

Now, I assume anything with a rebate is fraud. The insight from this article is that we were right.

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You missed the first part, which was “read the instructions”.

I worked at a store that heavily promoted these things to get foot traffic. The only people with problems were the people lining up on Sunday meaning to fill a cart with shit they didn’t need - or even know what it was to get it for “free”.

I remember one guy, who punched me in the mouth, screaming that he bought a scam video card “it doesn’t even play tapes” for $14.95 and didn’t get his $20 rebate for whatever reason. I think that he didn’t include the UPC code or something. The medical bills after I threw him out the window, the arrest and fine were a lot more than $14.95.

I used the free cd offers all of the time to get CD-Rs… we’d make custom mix CDs for the folks in our dorm.

Throwing someone through a window may cross the line beyond self defense, but did the customer get charged too?

The guy jumped me as I retreated and got tossed away from the crowd. (Hell I was making $4.50/hr + spiffs, not there to fight people) Fortunately, I spent most of my teenage years doing farm work, and it was all caught on camera.

The cops thought it was great. My boss not so much. The whole thing was absurd - an adult attacking a 19 year old over a few dollars.

It’s an expression. Russians even take it further, ‘defenestration’!

I assume from the story those are the angry fellows charges not our hero protagonist.

One can not punch a person and not expect retaliation, even if that person you perceive to be a social inferior to you doing retail work.

Funny you took the complete opposite way that the clerk got in trouble.

Defenestration and defenéstrate are words in English and Spanish as well. It’s a common concept

Not to be mistaken with transfenestration which is something you do yearly to prove you are still insane and keep getting your check.

HN doesn’t get Pynchon references. Interesting.

Defenestration is a Czech expression (the Czech language works with Latin roots a lot, even has special grammar for it). Russians only adopted it.

Defenestration is a term coined to describe a political event in Prague but I'm not sure the word itself is Czech but is arguably French, Latin or English in origin.

> Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate ("out of the window") is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague

But that article has no citations for that claim...

Well I guess it depends on how you attribute words to languages. In Czech language it's standard practice to compose words with Latin stems. The word was originally written by a Czech person in a Czech language text using specialized Czech grammar for integration of Latin stems.

The prefix de- is used in Czech normally since forever and to this day (originally Latin though), the stem fenestra is Latin (not normally used in Czech), and the suffix -ace is Czech (Slavic origin).

BTW the quote you posted says the first usage in English language was in reference to the Czech text which actually coined it (thus the English text adopted it), not that it's English in origin.

Do you have sources or references for any of this? I can't find any sources that dig into by who or in what text "defenstrate" was originally coined. You say it is in reference to "the Czech text" but don't clarify which text you qre talking about? The quote is posted makes no reference to any text...

The best discussion of the original formation of the word I have been able to find was here: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/35905/did-a-...

> The prefix de- is used in Czech normally since forever and to this day

It's only used in loan words. Like "depilace" is a normally used loanword in Czech, non-loan word variant would be "odchlupeni". But "dechlupeni" (using "de-" instead of "od-" + native Czech word) would be completely nonsensical.

Claiming that "defenestrace" is originally a Czech word seems absurd to me. It might have been "invented" in Czech lands, but clearly from the latin form.

Hmm, a lot of Czech words aren't actually Czech, then. I think that makes even less sense. The fact is the Czech language loans heavily from many different languages (Latin being one of the top donors) - but that doesn't mean we speak a mix of languages in one sentence.

The prefix de- is not used only in loanwords, you can construct new words with it just fine. It doesn't sound right in your example but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

"defenestrace" is a Czech word, "defenestration" is an English word, but they can both trace their origin to the latin "defenestratio".

> The prefix de- is not used only in loanwords, you can construct new words with it just fine.

Listing some examples would strengthen your argument immensely.

> It doesn't sound right in your example but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

To my native ear, it sounds nonsensical. I wouldn't be able to guess what it is supposed to mean.

Defenestratio is not a Latin word, you wouldn't describe the act like that as a Latin speaker. You'd say something involving the words "de fenestra", but definitely not as one word.

It was the Czech person who first combined the Czech/Latin prefix, the Latin stem and the Czech/Slavic suffix in a decidedly Czech sentence.

> Listing some examples would strengthen your argument immensely.

You said one yourself. Nobody would say it because there's already a better way to say that, but everybody would understand the meaning and the grammar is fine.

"dechlupeni" is not a Czech word.

> but everybody would understand the meaning and the grammar is fine.

No, I certainly wouldn't. It's nonsense.

Can you name a word formed like that which is present in some dictionary?

Even if you're right about that, it still doesn't make the word Latin. Latin speakers wouldn't say it as one word, and there would also be a verb in a Latin sentence - "de fenestra" by itself is nonsense.

(I had the displeasure of studying Latin in school)

> Latin speakers wouldn't say it as one word

Note that all Latin speakers in that time period spoke Latin as their second (third...) language, and it was pretty common to see influence of other (mother) languages onto the used Latin. It wouldn't be surprising if e.g. a German native speaker (where such word concoctions are common place) coined such a Latin word.

It would also be unsurprising to see a native speaker of classical Latin coin such a Latin word. defenestro and defenestratio are perfectly compatible with the normal methods of word formation in classical Latin, which very rarely forms compound nouns, but which forms compounds of verbs with prepositional prefixes all the time. (Just in that last sentence, you can see the ghostly remains of perfectus [thoroughly-done], compono [with-put], praepositio [before-putting], and praefixus [before-fastened], all impeccably classical. You can also see compatior [with-endure], which does not seem to have existed in classical Latin, but is obviously derived in exactly the same way as the others.)

Here ( https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=defatigatio&la=... ) is a dictionary entry citing defatigatio to a speech given by Cicero.

its a czech practice with few town-hall people in Prague few centuries ago IIRC, not a czech word per se

I think the Czech term is "Defenestrace"

Is that related to strace? Or maybe dtrace.

Defenestration is an old term in tech circles which meant just the opposite - throw Windows out of your computer

Wouldn’t the Russian way be more ‘defenestrecution’?

The world would be a much better place if more hackernews comments could include the phrase "I threw him out the window".

/r/ThatHappened

I forget the name but during the dot-com era there was a company who sold stuff like TVs at vastly inflated prices (something like 10x retail) to consumers on the premise that they could get a 100% rebate by mailing in a form thus making the purchase "for free".

Their business model was based on the assumption that a percentage of customers would forget to do this. Unfortunately, when hundreds or thousands of $ is on the line, people were very diligent! Unsurprisingly that company didn't last long.

They were called CyberRebate.

I got so much stuff I didn't need from them. I filled my entire dining table with stuff, and got my family to help me with an assembly line style UPC cutting and pasting operation.

I even scripted their website to auto-generate the rebate form.

The final batch never paid out, but I was able to file a credit card chargeback for most, but not all, of it.

I scripted that too. I had to print and fax around 400 pages of documentation to the credit card company. (Print directly to fax either didn't exist then, or at least I didn't have it.)

It's been how many years? And I still have stuff from them in my house, some in use, some just brand new in a box.

I was getting 1.5% cashback from the credit card I used, and everything was completely free.

Yeah, it baffles me that whoever did the planning for this thought that "making it cumbersome to fill out" would work the same as for, say, a 5% rebate on a small purchase vs. when the rebate is worth thousands of dollars.

I wonder if the decision-maker could have been wealthy enough that thousands of dollars felt insignificant to them. At some point, you lose sight of how much things cost, because the answer is almost always "not much".

Reminds me of Jessica Walter's character in Arrested Development: "It's a banana, Michael - how much could it cost? Ten dollars?"

Actually it's pretty genius. They probably made a killing, they went out being 80 million in the hole due to unpaid rebates and ended up paying out something like 2 cents on the dollar. I'm sure they got decent salaries and made money from upstream purchases.

Assuming no one here went to jail this is essentially a legal way to run a ponzi scheme.

If the buyer didn't care how much things cost, they'd buy the $500 TV at the shop, not through some crazy "$500 TV for $5000" scheme.

Rich people aren't idiots, I think the target customer for this thing is someone who's so price sensitive that they'll go to huge lengths to get a TV for free.

How many years till that's true

People in 2100 will laugh at that joke and think "that's way too cheap. What is she thinking!"

Has happened before:

https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...

https://www.reddit.com/r/StupidFood/comments/yavk2n/banana_s...

When a chore pays more than your day job, people often find a way to get it done.

Oh man I remember that site! Adding this comment to remind myself to research it later.

Edit: cyberrebate.com [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberRebate

I don’t recall ever getting one denied. Maybe I was lucky but those CD rebates were huge for me as a kid to have infinite supply of media to write content to. Music, games, apps, etc.

Yep, Same, I've filled out probably 25+ rebates in my life and I always got the rebate, eventually. You have to make sure you read and follow the fine print though - the instructions are very specific. The GP probably didn't read the fine print.

I still have several spindles of CD-Rs (and later DVD-Rs) that were free (or maybe $1) after rebate.

Similar 'cashback' deals exist even now... You rarely get 100% back. Often there isn't too much fine print either, and the payout rate is ~90% in my experience.

Sometimes they insist in paying in amazon vouchers or some other 'almost cash' currency.

They are very common on subscriptions.

Oh, you don't have to tell me, I have made several hundred dollars on these deals - I only do money makers (where the cash back is more than the cost of the subscription). Plus one of my friends can always use the subscription stuff and are thrilled to get the items if it's not something I'd use. (Such as makeup & dog toys). I've always had the correct payout. I have a browser that I solely use for cash back websites.

I usually find out about these deals on https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ which is run by what seems like fantastic, non-scammy, people and its the only credit card blog that I know of that's independent. The rest shill for referrals.

Amazon bucks are the closest thing to cash.

Other things used as cash include gift cards, cigarettes, drugs, bikes, iDevices, baby formula, diapers, laundry detergent...

>Amazon bucks are the closest thing to cash.

Although, generally speaking, Amazon and other general purpose large retailers (Walmart, Home Depot) have figured that out. When I get rewards points of some sort with an option to convert to various gift cards, the best deal is always with the specialty retailers but then you need to make a point of using the card for something you really want/need as opposed to just adding some dollars to your Amazon account.

I wrote my first web app to track my rebates :). Even had some sign ups. Vbscript with an Access database. Worked pretty well.

An amazing spoof of this from Nathan For You comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbC0-tuYE2o

I thought the link was going to be this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IWotuQBgs4

Damn, actually that one is even more appropriate, haha. Too many options!

Wow thanks for that, really good. Love the alligator.

I don't know about the nineties, but nearly every single rebate offer I've ever filled out I've gotten the money promised. Sometimes it takes a while but most of them are online and you just fill in your bank account information. Takes at most a couple minutes. Some random amount of months later you get a deposit in your account.

I also try to do any of those class action suits I qualify for. Those are a little more hit or miss but it's about the same time investment of a simple form, but usually those take a lot longer to get money. Got a check for 3 bucks for buying chips at some point in the past couple years, but it was really nice getting hundreds of dollars put into my bank account from Facebook a few months back after filing a claim years ago and forgetting about it.

I got most of my rebates at Frys back, but tried to avoid those purchases because of the hassle. I will never forget though the rebate that Microsoft refused to honor for the joystick I bought as a kid.

I had about a 95% success rate. As a broke student in the early naughties I got almost everything tech FAR. CompUSA and Frys (pour one out) were especially good. I miss the cameraderie of the Black Friday Frys line.

>early naughties

Haram

I miss Fry's Electronics, but they were definitely a practitioner of "free after rebate" and other rebate-based discount schemes where they took your money up front and claimed that you would get some of it back from some third party sometime in the future.

In spite of the obviously scammy nature of such promotions, I still took the bait a few times, averaging probably a 50% rebate success rate - somewhat better than I would have predicted. At some point there was a web site where you could check your rebate status, which seemed to help a bit.

I did submit those rebates, and was paid back all of them. They weren't scams. You had to be very meticulous about cutting out the correct UPC bar codes and scanning and retaining copies of receipts etc. The hoops were elaborate, but if you jumped through them - you got your money back.

I bought a lot of stuff with rebates and I almost always got a check after a very long wait. Sometimes you had to call the number to make them send it out. It was fine when I didn’t make much money but after a while it was too much hassle.

And that is the point: price discrimination. For some 22 dollars is expensive, so they will do some work for the 12-14 dollar rebate. People making good monies won't care too much, or not at all.

Mad dad was obsessed with those cd and floppy disk rebates.

I believe he got paid every time or close to.

I bought an MSI gaming laptop in 2106 and they promised $100 back after rebate. Never heard back.

I don’t understand the complaint. You’ll get your money in 2106.

Future you should probably not buy that laptop then.

$100 is barely worth anything in 2106.

Not quite true, but I can see why you'd think that. I worked for a reputable SP company in Oxfordshire, legal were all over everything we did. The Hoover debacle did wonders for our business, all of a sudden clients wanted protection from the scammers.

But ok I then went to one in London and some directors were sent to prison for fraud. So OP yes you have a point. It was a dodgy world.

Anecdotal experience

I've gotten all the rebates I've filled out. I just assume that enough people are sloppy or don't read instructions that it works out for the company

https://youtu.be/6vbCKava_JE

I sent like 15 people to get free Emachines after signing up for MSN for two years. They all got it.

paypal stole my free $5 or $15 in the '90s by removing my account

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