Major Rebate Processing Company Filing Bankruptcy

Major rebate processing company Continental Promotion Group (CPG) has recently filed bankruptcy.

Why should you care? While the money owed to you via rebates is provided by a manufacturer, the check might come via the processing company. And CPG processes for a lot of manufacturers.

Don't get too worked up yet. According to this article, "just because the rebate processor has gone belly up doesn't mean you won't get your money. You never contracted with the rebate company....You contracted with the manufacturer and the manufacturer owes you money."

So if you are having difficulty receiving your rebate or have received a check recently that you haven't deposited yet, contact the manufacturer directly, rather than the processor. Canon is already telling its customers not to cash rebate checks, as they may bounce. They are having new checks issued via another means. Other manufacturers like Adobe are saying they will even reimburse consumers if they incur bank fees due to bounced rebate checks. Some companies are issuing new rebate forms.

SlickDeals.Net has a good article summarizing how to determine whether you're affected, and what you can do about it. It also has a long list of companies who use CPG to process their rebates.

To find out more about this, you can search "CPG rebate" in any search engine, and a slew of articles will pop up. A few more that I've read are here, here, and here.

Fortunately I don't have any outstanding rebates out there. If you think you're affected by this bankruptcy filing, what are you doing about it? Have you called anywhere yet? I'm curious to see how well this is being handled.