The way I understand it, rebates can sometimes be tied to certain shipment or inventory. Say for instance, a company bangs out 1000 motherbaords, and has sold them to a reseller, for this amount, but expects to makes this much, based on this amount returned through rebate. The keep the rebate accrued tied to that shipment. Open box is generally older inventory, thus outside of the targeted sale group. At least thats the way an industry friend describe a part of it anyways. The have all sorts of promotional value and strategies to consider.
In terms of Status-Now.com, aka http://www.velocityfulfillment.com/, I've submitted many many rebates to them, and have neither had a hint of trouble, nor one that took longer than thwe 8-10 weeks. Thats not to say they dont mess up, but they're geenrally oneof the more consistent promotional media companies. The do tend to take the bulk of the 10 weeks though.
It could be worse, if you see a rebates411.com reabte, run, run and hide your money, your stamps, your enevelopes, everything. Same could be said for Xion rebates, WorldWiderebates.com, & HIS Tech and their PM continental Promotions, all very much worse than Status-Now.com.
If you want to buy hardware with fast ease free rebates, go, in this order, of speed and processing 1) Apevia, 2) Crucial, 3) EVGA 4) OCZ 5) Status-now.com, ........... get the drift? LOL.
They're not so bad. Only because there are worse out there.
Peace, Penewah!
MSI K9A2 790FX / AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz/Xigmatek 120/ Antec 900/HD4850 Xfired/OCZ Platinum Rev2 2 x 1GB DDR2800 /Samsung Spinpoint 320GB SATA/ PCPC 750W CF Silencer/ LITE-ON 20X DVD±R /WD My Book 500GB/ Also Intel E2180@2.88 Ghz/GIGABYTE GA-P35/CoolMast Case Centurian/Biostar 780G/AMD 4600+ x 2 @ 3.0/Logysis Acrylic/Vista/Ubuntu 8.1 / Corsair 550W PSU