I bought a Fujitsu Scan Snap scanner, and it rocks. It’s all duplex, full text indexing, faster than a speeding bullet, paperless office, blah blah blah. And with a $50 rebate, who could go wrong?

Well, the thumbs are pointing at ‘this guy.’ I sent Fujitsu exactly what they asked for in the rebate packet, and what did I get in my email today? This:

Unfortunately, we were unable to honor your request for the following reasons: We did not receive an original serial number label with your request; We did not receive a rebate certificate with your request; You must submit more than one UPC symbol or proof-of-purchase tab to qualify for the rebate.

You will receive an additional notification by mail. You may also access your submission by contacting us at:

Online: http://www.fujitsu-fcpa.rebatestatus.com/link.aspx?xxxxx-xxxxx

Customer Service: 877-247-2328

We appreciate your business. Thank you.

I did send it all in, exactly as they asked for. Ironically, I can’t find my copies of those forms. I think these rebate form companies get extra cash for denying legitimate requests, it’s all I can fathom. This is the second rebate I’ve sent out and had this happen with, even though in both cases I followed the letter of the law.

The disadvantage of outsourcing everything is that there is no legitimate way to register dissent. Fujitsu has their cash, the rebate company probably keeps a premium, and calling them doesn’t let Fujitsu know how badly they’ve screwed a customer. It’s a win-win-lose proposition. So, I’m done. Done with warranties, done with rebates, done with operating with corporations as though they actually meant to honor contracts. It’s not like this is new ground for me, but it certainly is painful to tread it each time I do. It’s a system designed to screw people over. Feel the karma of that, Fujitsu, you’ve earned it.

Muji contends that design needn’t announce itself—rather, it can become apparent to you through use, over time. Nor is Muji interested in capitalizing on consumers’ seemingly insatiable appetite for designer goods. From day one, the company has maintained a “no brand” credo, refusing to put its name on any of its products. And although many Muji products are designed with guidance from the most thoughtful designers working today (Naoto Fukasawa, Enzo Mari, Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, and Sam Hecht among them), Muji does not promote or even discuss its relationships with these luminaries.

I’ll be posting here again shortly to talk about some of the decision-making and technology that went into creating kuneshdesign.com, including some thoughts about why I’m launching a contracting business, plans for the biz, and a bit of the technical tricks behind the portfolio section.

In other words, if you are enabling networked social software, does it really matter what’s on the backend or which backend is being used? Joel Splosky gets all Frederick Brooks about this point, making it clear it is not the means—i.e.—tools or methods, but understanding the requirements that matter:

I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.... If this is true, building software will always be hard. There is inherently no silver bullet.

I could pay another few hundred to have Apple fix it, or I could trust some crackpot off the internet to sell me a replacement battery and the directions to fix it. 1 crackpot, $90, and a little home mojo later, I had a working iPod. For a month.

It still works now in my car, but that’s about all it’s good for. After $500, frustration, and home fixits, I needed a new solution. Being in graduate school at the time, I looked at the Apple education program. Then I went to Best Buy. I am not a fan of Best Buy, and dislike big box retailers in general. I can’t even remember what I was there for originally, but I thought I’d check out their selection of Apple products all the same. I could get the new 1GB iPod Shuffle for $140 on the Apple site with the education discount or pay $150 at Best Buy and get their warranty program for an extra $10.

I went the Best Buy route, since if it got damaged, they would supposedly replace the Shuffle, no questions asked. A few weeks ago, my shuffle stopped playing mid-song. I had charged it up recently, but I thought it was a dead battery anyway. I took it home and connected it to the Mac, nothing happened. The little light glowed yellow, then green, but no recognition by iTunes, no appearance on the desktop, de nada! I went to the Apple support site, Mac OSX hints, etc., but couldn’t find a way to start it up. It was officially dead, and I was sure my warranty had expired by now.

Pinch me, I had about 5 months left. I was about to use one of those warranty things. What hoops would I have to jump through? What perils would I be forced to endure to get a crappy old 1GB iPod?

I had kept all the receipts, warranty thingie, packaging and assorted ephemera in the case of just such an emergency. I promptly forgot the packaging, brought in the warranty and the dead iPod. While driving to the store I realized this is a super-designed Apple product—there is no place to put a serial number on it. I continued on to the store anyway, to see what would happen. I imagined long lines of grumpy Chicagoans, despondent employees, apathetic managers, the works.

Instead, I walked right up to the customer service counter, told the lady there my story, and gave her my iPod and warranty. She looked it over, and put the iPod in a plastic bag. I had moved and so we updated and compared my addresses and driver’s license. She told me to go to the shelf, grab a new iPod 1GB, and come back. So, I did. Clippy iPod, here I come!

I went back to bring her the new iPod, and she told me that she was sorry, but that the difference in price (the new ones are now $80) would have to be given to me on a gift card. My jaw dropped. The what? Yup, the gift card. I felt like I’d just robbed them. I had a dead iPod and a warranty, and I walked out with a new iPod, a new warranty, and $60 on a gift card. Are the pigs flying yet?