I.
Hate.
Rebates.

Srsly.

ACTUALLY, it's selling for $1999 at Projector People... They had an additional $100 off last week, making it $1399 after the rebate with free shipping...

Rebates are awesome! I love filling out the small card with all of your personal information, challenging you to write all you information in an area that is almost impossible to stay within the predefined areas. Then mailing all of the necessary information so that you have to wait 5 to 6 weeks for the money. Its like getting cash for your birthday.
It doesn't make sense that they should automatically take off $500 from the projector, how else are they going to put all of your personal information in a database and sell it to "Carefully selected companies"

I'm going to wait for the inevitable 1080p pico projectors for $499 that will be out by next Fall, so I can annoy everyone on the bus by showing high-def video of my kids on the bus into work. Every day.

Rebates arghhh! I'm thinking i'll wait a while on this one too though.

Heeey is that projection accurate?

I literally bought this projector 5 hours ago. I can't wait till I get it. From an authorized mitsubishi dealer, and before rebate, I paid $1695. So after the rebate I will have paid $1195. Awesome deal.

Projectors are getting cheaper but replacement projector lamps are still a significant cost of ownership. Consider that rated lamp life is the time till the lamp will be outputting only HALF of its original brightness.

There are some new Diamond Lamps which are about 10% cheaper and have the bulb from the original manufacturer who supplied the projector manufacturer. There's more info at [www.presentationtek.com]

Rebates are so dumb, when they say it takes 6-8 weeks, its usually 6-8 months

if they do it with rebates then they are likely to make an extra $500 on a good percentage of projectors since many people dont send them it. why cut 500 off when some fools will let you keep it?

Supposedly, rebates are designed so that the manufacturer can guarantee the customers get the money. Supposedly, manufacturers are afraid that if they just dropped $500 off the wholesale price, retailers would keep their price the same and pocket the extra $500 themselves.

If that was the case, though, why are "instant rebates" so few and far between compared to the mail-in variety?

Therefore, I lean toward IRFAN's hypothesis...

Companies will pay between 300 and 3000 bucks per head for customer information (hence all these databases full of names that change owners for ridiculous amounts of money).
For years, the industry has devised schemes to make customers give them their information for less - bonus programs (collect points to get an item), mail-in rebates, improved functionality of software if registered, etc. This saves companies from paying a middle man who gets the information from the customer, and, usually, saves money again because the items you get for your bonus points are manufactured by the company, its daughter/mother companies or partners.

For a couple of years, I had made a hobby of sending in wrong information, and have the customer service people track me down and ask me for the right information again and again. Most of the bigger corporations can show quite a bit of stamina when it comes to that. I still occasionally give them a run for my data, and recently scored a $400 bottle of red wine just for correcting a (intentionally inserted) typo in one of my registration forms. Of course those are just peanuts for a corporation the size of, say, Sony or BMW, but for the little man (i.e. me), that bottle sure was a good deal.

"If Mail-in offer is not received within 8 weeks, customer must notify Mitsubishi by emailing PVS_Promotions@mdea.com no later than 60 days after submission, or all rights hereunder will expire"

Awesome. So, if after 56 days of hearing absolutely nothing from them, you're given a whopping 4 days to respond to them, otherwise lose all rights to your $500 rebate? How is that even legal?

how much do the replacement bulbs cost?