'Where's My Rebate"

An editorial in the Austin Statesman goes into the pushback and horrible handling of the Texas federal rebate cash for appliances program. Texas received 23 million dollars in federal money for the rebates or trade up program as it is called. People could receive any where from $35 dollars to $1200 dollars depending on what you were trading up to. The program was to start on Wednesday March 31^st, though it became delayed due to Easter, and various different religious holidays. The rebates for the appliances went online Wednesday April 7^th.

You could apply for the rebate on the Texas Powerful site for your rebate. Once the website went live the whole entire site was jammed up. No one could get on to even submit for people’s forms, this was caused by the system only having one single IP address. People had another option to call in to get their rebate. This was even worse, with hold times over 3 or 4 hours. This wasn't necessarily going to grant you a rebate, the reason why is because it was just to apply for it and not to receive an instant verification.

I agree with the editor that there should have been some kind of drawing or lottery to give people that really need these rebates. This would have gone a lot smoothly then the way it was handled, almost like how NCAA holds lottery’s for tickets to bowl games or the final four. I believe this process should have been planned out more wisely then it was. Then the state is paying a third party company Helgeson Enterprises Inc, based out of Minnesota. Texas is paying Helgeson $983,000 dollars for the rebate program. The editor goes into telling us that the company dealing with the rebates has a very bad track record as well.

It seems to me another lazy attempt by the state to just throw everything out there rather then carefully prepare for it. This can be seen in my earlier blogs about the states lack of preparation to the border wars. I thought in my mind we are getting a rebate from the state not a third party company. Then again doesn’t surprise me in this day and age. Everything gets insourced or outsourced no one seems to be able to do anything on there own any more. I believe the cash for appliances is a great idea but here in Texas has been done very poorly.