on apples and rebates

So I'm calling the apple store with two questions--one no brainer and the other one a "are you kidding me?"

The no brainer is about getting my rebate for the free ipod I ordered with the new mac.

The second is to ask them if they offer any kind of price guarantee since ONE WEEK after I bought this Mac they dropped the price on it by (I just looked) $390!!!! And that's on the new one with a 3.06 GHz processor, but mine is only 2.93 GHz, which they don't sell anymore. So it's even worse. If I sent this one back and reordered today I would get a CPU that's about 5% faster/$400 cheaper (after tax). But I can't get a perfect comparison since they "discontinued" my model. And I can already smell a "what? we didn't drop the price on your model" excuse coming.

And now I'm on my second call. Apple dropped the first call after answering with some computer that sounded like a man who wanted to assist me. I don't know if you can tell but I HATE calling into a call center.

Now I'm talking to Mary, who just asked for my web order number and my address and all that. Judging from her drawl I think she's from Georgia. She asks me how she can help. She seems very nice. I'm suspicious.

I tell Mary I have two questions about my order. I ask her the second question first, the one about the price guarantee.

Mary tells me that they do have "price protection" and that she will check to see if I qualify. She checks and says that YES, I do qualify. Then she tells me that she is setting up a credit memo for $500+tax (which works out to $541.25).

So while she's getting that set up she asks me about my second question. I tell her I went with the free iPod with the order, the one where you get an iPod for free if you get the 8GB model, or $229 back if you get one of the other models. She tells me to go to apple.com/promo, click the 2nd one from the left, and enter my order info to get the rebate.

10:27 on the phone and I got $541.25 cash and my $229 rebate setup.

Thanks Mary from Apple.

Talk about a change of heart. Now I feel like singing the Camp Granada song.