could an American explain to a Brit what the fuck is the point of a MIR?
Not a American, but I can answer it in part. There are present in my country as well but to a far far lesser extent I am glad to say.
In terms of purchases, MIR is "Mail In Rebate". It has other terms depending on what you are talking about.
On the top, it is as you say. Extra paperwork for nothing. In fact though, it is bearly better than a con in my opinion personally.
Why it is not done at the check out is it is expected the retailer will not pass the money on to the customer. Experence shows a large enough number of people at the check out counter will pocket the refund themselves (if not the business). Customer never sees it.
If it was done at the wholesale level, their could be issues going forward as retailers will not buy unless the price is dropped again. Forcing a always discounted price which a manufacture does not want long term.
Now, but offering the rebait this way, the customer is more likly to get the money. To process these occational rebaits, the manufacture outsources the job of checking and paying claims to a third party business. It is about here things go pair shaped. Between working out the terms of the MIR (ie: dates between <x> and <y>) and processing time (some upto 8 weeks) and little things not completed correctly (processing agent does not think you filled in the paperwork correctly) or meeting processing times (ie: need to have a claim in the agents hand within 1 month of MIR offer ending) and meeting the required method of applying for the MIR (ie: generally need to post it, registered if you want to track it) and assuming the form is not "lost" (agent too lazy or did actually get lost), it can result in a lot of people just giving up.
At which point, the MIR feels like a con to those customers so they ignore future ones, espically if the offering is only a few dollars.
Given the businesses that sprung up to process the MIR on behalf of manufactures, I am surprised there are not more businesses springing up to help the customers through this process. But IIRC, someone mentioned it is against the terms of a MIR offering for that to happen (conditions in place to stop people getting help to claim? that sounds fair).
The MIR agents are proberly working hard to process claims, but I suspect it is in the interest of the businesses for most claims not to be completed correctly, so they can get the manufacture to pay them, but they do not need to pass it on to the customer (but that is my conspiracy theory of the system anyway).
