If you dont get your rebates, you check the copies of all the stuff you sent in (you did make copies like the fine print on the rebates says you should right?), then call them and get them to send it. Even if they are picky, if you bug them they usually send it. As for cendyne, they went out of freaking business. Yet staples still honored the rebates for the cd drives that I bought, they sent a little card saying that even though they were not obligated to do so, they were paying cendynes rebates, and I got a check from them.
What I do (thanks to a suggestion from one of the other guys here) is make up a separate envelope for each group of rebates, put on the outside how much and what company/product and a date when I should call them if I haven't gotten the rebate and put all the copies of stuff inside. Keeps things organized.
If you are a rebate hater, fine. You can pass up stuff like the 200 gig 8 meg cache hard drives for $99, no problem for me. Leaves me more chance to buy the really good deals. And there are good deals for you if you are a rebate hater. For instance if you dont want to get the $20 (after rebates) 52x Burner Lite On drives, newegg has them for under $40 shipped, retail package.
To each his own, if you are a rebate hater, more power to you.
As for the article, its kinda whacked. There are laws in some states requiring stores to state rebate amounts in all the ads and showing actual walk out the door price. And mostly companies comply with this in thier advertising (in general the advertising for the big chains is same across country, easier to make all the advertising have the rebate prices instead of separate ones for each state), so I dont understand what all his talk of fraudulent advertising.