Rebate Issues

[Aragarthiel]

My husband and I are signed up for an awards program that offers you rebates on things like movie tickets and gas if you send your receipts in. Well, these rebates have time periods when they're active, meaning you can only send in receipts from that time period.

We sent in a receipt from getting gas at the beginning of last month, only to find out that instead of having the date printed Month-Day-Year like most American places have it, it was Day-Month-Year so it screwed the whole thing up and we lost our chance at a rebate.

I'd like to ask though, is it really that hard to figure out we're sending in a receipt from February 5, considering May 2 hasn't even happened yet?!?

And I'd like to ask the gas station (which is locally owned and not affiliated in any way with any sort of chain), why do you have your receipts formatted that way?

[bainsidhe]

Could be how the default programming was set up.

I'd like to ask though, is it really that hard to figure out we're sending in a receipt from February 5, considering May 2 hasn't even happened yet?!?

Oh my goodness, yes! Unless the company and workers are very familiar with dates listed as day/month/year, this confuses people constantly. And for some reason, having a future month written rarely gives a person pause. Unless it's listed as something very obviously wrong, such as 28/2/15, since most people realize there aren't 28 months in the year.

[MrSmiley]

Living in canada, I actually have the opposite problem. Things are SUPPOSED to be be day-month-year (it's a british thing) but all kinds of companies use american software and etc. Including the government employees. It's probably the majority of people who deal in MMDDYY but it's not everyone and quite a few people were taught in school to do it the other way as well.

Anyway, years of trying to decipher what a 6 digit date actually represents has given me a general distain for them. If I have to pick one it's YYMMDD because the sorting works nice and descending order numerically on a list.

/beware the Y10K bug.

[wolfie]

Guy, I'm in Canada too, and my understanding is that we're SUPPOSED to follow the ISO format - YYYYMMDD. ISO chose it because it can be seamlessly extended to include the time - going from the biggest unit down to the smallest.

As to why I called you "Guy", I recognized your Avatar (Guy Smiley, intended to represent the stereotype of game show hosts), even though it's been DECADES since I last watched Sesame Street.

[dalesys]

Guy, I'm in Canada too, and my understanding is that we're SUPPOSED to follow the ISO format...

Yeah... but when the heffalump rolls over, Piglet better scramble...

[BlaqueKatt]

Guy, I'm in Canada too, and my understanding is that we're SUPPOSED to follow the ISO format - YYYYMMDD. ISO chose it because it can be seamlessly extended to include the time - going from the biggest unit down to the smallest.

working in a lab that has international branches we used a standardized format to remove any confusion today's date would be written as 03APR2015.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

Huh, also in Canada and I always thought that French went ddmmyy, and English went mmddyy. Sort of how you would say it as you as you spoke.

Aragarthiel: Did the rebate company at least return the receipt so you can submit it in May for whatever the promotion happens to be that month?

[Aragarthiel]

Nope, and I had included a necessary form that you only get when you sign up with the club, and they didn't return that either.

[lordlundar]

I think I'll just leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MROtQBSbtV8

[Gilhelmi]

I use "Military" formatting these days too.

5 April 15.

No mess, No fuss. Should be law.