After Bugs, Appliance Rebate Program Rapidly Concludes

By WBUR News & Wire Services
Apr 22, 2010, 11:01 AM
5 Comments

A Massachusetts rebate program aimed at persuading consumers to trade in energy-sucking appliances for more miserly ones ended two hours after it began as enough residents registered for the $6.6 million in federal stimulus funding.

Earlier Thursday, the program, which operated on a first-come, first serve basis, proved too popular for the state’s computer system, crashing a server officials had boasted would be ready for the task.

The 10 a.m. Earth Day launch of the rebates aimed at ridding the electrical grid of old dishwashers, refrigerators, clothes washers and freezers immediately caused a jam on the phone number consumers needed to dial for a necessary rebate reservation.

And things were initially no better online, where people clicking on a designated website found the message, “Access is denied. You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.”

An hour after the program launched, the state announced an alternate website. Then, two hours later, it ran out of cash. An hour after that, the state stopped taking names for a waitlist for any unclaimed rebates.

The president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, Jon Hurst, called the program an “outstanding success” and says retailers are ready for the surge in customers.

“They’re all excited about it, and now that the money has been spoken for, the consumers will be going out to the stores and, frankly, comparison shopping,” Hurst said. “There’s a lot of great opportunities out there.”

A spokeswoman for the state Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs said she suspects heavy volume jammed the services early on, causing the website switch.

“We were getting calls from people before, well before 10 o’clock when the program was supposed to launch, so I think people got into the queue, tried to call even before it went live,” said spokeswoman Lisa Capone.

Buyers could receive a rebate of up to $250 for dishwashers, $200 for refrigerators, $175 for clothes washers and $50 for freezers. Consumers had to get a reservation number and rebate forms must be returned by June 19.

Earlier:

State To Distribute Federal Stimulus Funds For Efficient Appliances

Please follow our community rules when engaging in comment discussion on wbur.org.

Dale Schaetzke

The Massachusetts program appears flawed and designed to favor retailers over consumers. With rebates as high as $250, my observations in retail stores suggests that retailers were not motivated and did not offer decent “sale prices.” The prices I observed might have been even higher than the norm, from my perspective. The money was all gone by noon and subsequent applicants were wait listed but still required to make a purchase by May 5 without assurance that a rebate would be forth coming to qualify for any residue or additional rebate money. The rebate is only good if you are replacing a “working” appliance? Wouldn’t a smaller rebate have been more useful and an elimination of the “working appliance” replacement requirement have made more sense? Isn’t it more sensible to put expired, non-working appliances in the scrap heap than working models?
http://masssave.com Maribeth DiPietro

Attempted to get on the website all morning and have been calling the telephone number all day. Complete sham!!!!!
Pooja

While there was an initial hitch in the process, once directed to the new site, we were able to procure ticket. To help local economy, we went to our local appliance store who provided us better deal than the big boxes. All in all, we were able to use this opportunity to get rid of our highly inefficient diswasher and buy a eneregy efficient DW at a reasoable good price.
http://www.wbur.org/2010/04/22/rebate-program-hits-bugs Maneesh Mehra

I agree with most consumers that it was impossible to get on the site or on the phone. I did what most others did too and kept trying the phone/site constantly until 10.30A and gave up in despair. However, I retried again at 10.50A but this time not to the http://www.masssave.com/residential but instead to http://www.masssave.com/gax (the site advertised on the phone when I had called up a day before – somehow I had bookmarked it then. Lucky ? Perhaps). This time, it forwarded me to http://www.maswap1.com and gave me a reservation ticket for a dishwasher. We bought one from our local store last night.

Q: So, why am I writing this ?
A: To give hope to those who thought that the whole thing was a scam. It looks like there were some common people like you and I who did benefit from it.

I hope this helps.
Geno

This is a dumb program that ends 2 hours after starting. I question its effectiveness because it is so short in scope. It would be interesting for the program to publish the percentage of appliances replaced vs. the number inefficient appliances in use. That might make us all feel good that at least some minuscule percentage is being replaced. Then again, perhaps this is simply a publicity stunt and not really intended to do what it advertizes. This program does make good copy for the media outlets though…