Beware of Adobe rebate fraud

I just want to put a warning out there for anyone counting on the rebate for Adobe products. You might get the rebate, but it's going to take some work.

I am a longtime fan of Adobe Photoshop Elements. An outdated version came with a scanner I bought a few years back. I liked it enough to upgrade to the latest version. And I've upgraded twice more since then. It's a great program for fixing up digital photos. I've been buying the bundle that includes that and Adobe Premiere Elements, which is a decent program for editing videos and creating slideshows.

The bundle sells with a $30 rebate. The first time I sent in my rebate request, I heard nothing for months. Finally, I get a letter stating I hadn't submitted the necessary proof of purchase (a tab torn off from the inside of the box flap). But here's the crazy part: in the envelope with the denial, they also sent back the tab that I had submitted! So I resubmitted the request and this time it was honored.

Well, a year or two later I upgraded again and sent in the rebate request. Again, it was denied for the same reason: no proof of purchase tab was sent. They didn't send back my tab this time. But I sent a reply letter explaining that I did submit the tab. They then approved the rebate.

So this year when I upgraded again and submitted my rebate, I was sure to make copies of everything. Sure enough, I get a postcard this week, telling me the rebate was denied because "we did not receive an original proof-of-purchase tab 1 with your request". This year's added trick is that it includes these instructions: "To resubmit for this offer please return this card or letter, with any items mentioned above, to the address shown" but they don't list an address! So, I'm going to have to track down an address.

I can't believe they get away with this, which seems to be standard procedure for them. I'm sure plenty of consumers don't bother to resubmit. This time I filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Please leave a comment if you've had similar experiences with Adobe rebates.

Fortune cookie lottery numbers

I just saw someone extract that little slip of paper from a fortune cookie and it got me thinking, are the lottery numbers that appear on the reverse side randomly generated, and if so, do they properly cover the right range of numbers. It's conceivable that there is just a set of 100 or so fortune messages and that each of those is assigned to a specific sequence of lottery numbers (so that there is only a set of 100 or so combinations that would ever appear on a fortune cookie). If that's the case, then ever playing those numbers would be a bad idea because you'd have a good chance of having to share the prize with other cookie eaters.

One news article from 2005 seems to imply that the numbers are shared, but the way it's written it's not entirely clear.

Anyone out there have a reference to how the fortune cookie lottery numbers are generated?