Photo

Credit Christoph Hitz

In this episode, a small rebate debacle, one that the Haggler idiotically assumed would be resolved with a polite nudge. To this, dear reader, you are no doubt muttering, “Rebates are always complicated, Haggler. You are an idiot.” Yes, concurs the Haggler. That is why he used the word “idiotically” in the first sentence.

Why rub it in?

Q. In May, I bought a $99 computer router from TigerDirect, an online retailer. If I took advantage of a $60 rebate offered on the site, the actual price would come to $39. Great deal, I thought.

The router arrived, but with a note stating that to get my $60 rebate, I needed a card with an activation number. That card wasn’t in the box. It arrived in the mail a month later — which was a problem. The offer expired 30 days after I ordered the router. When I mailed in the activation number, along with other documents required to get the rebate, I was told I was too late.

Of course, because the activation card showed up so long after the router, this was not my fault. Phone calls and emails have not helped.

It’s just $60. But I’m annoyed, and this seems unfair.

RAMON GREENBERG, BOSTON

A. It turns out this rebate doesn’t come from TigerDirect. It comes from McAfee, pioneers in the antivirus protection market. If you want that rebate, you buy the router and agree to sign up for a year’s worth of virus protection courtesy of McAfee software. Under the terms of this deal, the first year of protection is free, though you must enter your credit card information on McAfee’s site and check the automatic renewal box. Not a big deal; you can cancel before the year is up.

The rebate-hunting consumer, then, could buy the router for $99, sign up for a year of virus protection, get a $60 rebate, then bail out of the McAfee offer before it starts costing money — $79 a year, if you’re curious.

To dissect all that went wrong here, let’s start with the offer itself, as it appeared on TigerDirect’s website. The Asus router deal is no longer available, but Tony Jones, a very helpful spokesman for Systemax, the company that owns TigerDirect, pointed the Haggler to a nearly identical offer for a different product — specifically, an external hard drive.

“WD Elements 2TB External Portable Drive With McAfee 2015 Multi Access 1 User 5 Devices 1 yr License MMD15E Bundle,” is how the offer is listed.

Under this somewhat perplexing description is a reference to “instant savings,” the word “rebate” and a link that says “see terms.” You’d be wise to click on it. Because that link takes you to another link that says, “Click here to download information.” Better click that one, too. Here, the full consumer decathlon that is necessary to get your $60 is laid out.

“To qualify for this rebate you must,” reads a sentence near the top, followed by a long list of instructions. One of them says, “Instructions Below in Special Instructions.”

That’s right, dear reader. Once you’ve clicked and then clicked again to the fine print, you need to scroll down to locate the even finer print. Suffice it to say, Mr. Greenberg, a retired professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, didn’t notice any of this when he bought the router.

But it all became clear once his router arrived. What wasn’t clear was why the McAfee authorization card wasn’t included with his order. Or why, once that card arrived 30 days later, Mr. Greenberg could enroll for 12 months of free McAfee antivirus protection but could not get the $60.

That’s right. It wasn’t too late to sign up for that unwanted virus protection. But it was too late to get the rebate.

TigerDirect phone representatives suggested that Mr. Greenberg contact McAfee. McAfee phone representatives suggested a chat with TigerDirect. And round and round it went.

Then the Haggler got involved. Soon after, Kimberly Eichorn, a spokeswoman for McAfee, wrote, “It appears that there was a delay where TigerDirect was not able to ship the product” — whether she meant the router or the activation card is not clear — “within the 30-day rebate redemption window.”

Translation: It’s TigerDirect’s fault!

But wait. Mr. Greenberg’s router arrived soon after he had ordered it. Mr. Jones, a spokesman for Systemax, confirmed this.

“I regret that whomever you spoke to this morning at McAfee provided incorrect information,” Mr. Jones wrote. “The router was shipped on May 8, the same day Mr. Greenberg ordered it.”

It’s McAfee’s fault!

Actually, there is fault on both sides. TigerDirect ought to present the terms of its rebates in plain, easy-to-grasp language. (The Haggler recommends, “Hey, there’s a $60 rebate offered here — and it’s at least $60 worth of hassle!”) And McAfee should have made it easier for Mr. Greenberg to get his $60, given that he applied late through no fault of his own.

The Haggler finds such situations a little maddening. To resolve consumer issues like this, all that is needed is an employee who cares enough to shepherd an anomalous case through a system that isn’t accustomed to anomalous cases. Neither company, it seems, had such an employee.

Wait. Both companies have plenty of them; it’s just that they emerged only once the Haggler showed up. In the days that followed, a check for $60 arrived via UPS from a McAfee affiliate. A check for $95 arrived from TigerDirect soon after.

Yes, Mr. Greenberg is $95 flusher than he would have been had McAfee managed to mail him the standard $60 rebate. And yet Mr. Greenberg has spent little time exulting. In an email last week, he said the whole experience had made him a little wistful for RadioShack.