Canon Rebates - Now you see them...Now you don't

These days it sometimes seems like Canon rebates are the setup for an old joke...

• Knock, Knock....Who's there?....Canon Rebates....Canon Rebates who?...
• When is a Rebate not a rebate.....

It's not that there aren't (or weren't) Canon Rebates around and it's not that some of the Canon Rebate offers weren't (aren't) good. It's also great that Canon (mostly) gave up on the mail in rebates where you had to fill out forms, cut codes from boxes, make copies in triplicate and mail off your paperwork to some outfit in the mide-west who did their level best to "lose" your paperwork and certainly wouldn't send you any rebate before the last day of the "8-10 weeks" it took to process your claim. Canon Rebates are now usually instant rebates, where the price of the item is lowered by the vendor, so what you see is what you pay. All of these things are great.

What can be confusing though is the "perpetual rebate" scheme which gets extended after the initial end date...then extended again...and again...and then it doesn't. BUT, even though the seemingly never ending CAnon Rebate scheme has ended, the actual cost of the item from the vendor doesn't change. Or may even go down. Even though the vendor can't tell you that in their ads because of what is known as a "Minimum Advertised Price" (MAP) agreement that vendors have to make with Canon. And not just Canon. Lots of manufacturers require authorized dealers to sign MAP agreements these days.

All this makes it tricky what to list on the REBATES page here as being current. If there is a rebate but it's not listed as a rebate, is it a rebate?.

For example if we look at the Canon EOS 5D MkIII body. In the last round of rebates Canon listed the price as $3499 with a $200 instant rebate making the final price $3299. That ended on March 30th 2013. Currently, on April 6th 2013 the Canon retail webstore, that's Canon's own site sells it for $3499. ADORAMA has it listed on their webpage at $3499, the Canon price. BUT, if you click on the BUY link and look at the price when it's in your shopping cart, you'll find that you only have to pay $2949 for it! ADORAMA can't advertise that price (MAP), but that's what they actually charge for it.

• Canon EOS 5D Body - $2949 (once added to shopping cart) - ADORAMA
  
• Canon EOS 5D Body - $2949 - AMAZON
  
• - B&H

The same scheme applies to lenses. Up until Match 30th there was a $300 rebate on the Canon EF 70-200/2.8L IS II USM, which canon sells for $2499 making a final price of $2199. That rebate is now over. At ADORAMA, the price of the lens is now listed at $2499, but add it to your shopping cart and the price magically drops to $2128

• Canon EF 70-200/2.8L IS II USM - $2128 - ADORAMA
• Canon EF 70-200/2.8L IS II USM - $2128 - AMAZON
• - B&H

Quite a coincidence that the prices at all three of the major trustworthy retailers is exactly the same...

So what does this means? Well a couple of things

1. You have no idea what anything will cost until you actually add it to your shopping cart. The price on the product page may well be meaningless. It's the manufacturer's MAP (if they have one), not the actual price of the item (though the two may be the same in some cases)
2. Sometimes waiting for the next rebate may not get you any better deal than you can get today

Right now there are no official Canon rebates on any DSLRs, Speedlites or Lenses. However some of the prices are as low as they were when the rebates were in effect (possibly lower). Canon's only official rebate program on photo gear covers a selection of Powershot Digicams.

I decided to leave the current rebate links on the rebates page because they actually still link to some good deals. For example on the ADORAMA page linked to below, ignore the prices. They are the MAP prices. The only way to see how much discount there is on them is to add them to your shopping cart. You don't have to buy them of course, you can just remove them and not follow through the ordering process, but you have to do it to see how much they will actually cost.

• Canon Lens at Adorama

An example is the Canon EF 100/2.8L IS USM Macro lens which Canon have for $1049 and which used to have a $100 instant rebate on it (now expired) making the price $949. Adorama's current price is $899, despite the price being shown as $1049 in the lens listings and on the item page. Only once you have it in your shopping basket does the price drop to $899.

So explore and check the REAL selling price of anything you find interesting. You may get a pleasant surprise.