My previous blog entry had me raving about the terrific free after rebate deals at Menards. This entry is about how easy it is to get even more out of these deals.
First off you will need to get the Menards credit card. It's called the BIG CARD. Why get their card? Two reasons - first, they send you a scratch off certificate (usually worth $2 but it can be more) and second, you will get a certificate worth 2% of your purchases somewhere down the road. I just got my certificate enclosed in my cc statement for $10! Oh, I forgot - with each credit card statement are 2 pages of Menards coupons just for their Big Card customers! There is usually a FREE item amoungst those as well!
The FAR items are free BUT the rebate checks that are sent out are to be used against additional purchases at Menards. In other words, you can't cash these checks at your local bank. Menards wants your business and your money and they've come up with an ingenious way to get both. Doesn't matter. I'll show you why in a bit.
Menards has even made tracking rebates easy. They've set up a site www.rebateinternational.com where you can see if your rebate is pending or whether the check was issued. This site lists all your rebates for the past year. Wonderful.
If you're thinking this is too good to be true, well, you're right. Menards does have quantity limits and if you're doing the FAR deals they want you to buy an additional $10 worth of non-rebateable items. So, what do I buy for $10 of non-rebateable items? A Menards $10 gift card! Takes care of everything.
Let's say that you're hooked and on board for all these deals and are swimming in rebate checks, Menards gift cards and Menards reward certificates. Too many to juggle and keep straight. What do you do then? Since I'm somewhat ADD here's what I did - added all the dollar values up, which came to just under $100, went to Menards and grabbed (2) $50 gift cards and bought those cards using the rebate checks, reward certificate and smaller value gift cards plus a couple of bucks out of my pocket!
What am I going to do with my $50 GCs? The most obvious thing would be to keep rolling this sum into FAR deals but then I'd be missing out on the 2% from charging the purchases on the store card. So I'm thinking of offering them as a trade for other store GC's. I understand there is a website for doing just this. Gotta find it.
Menards is the hardware store equivalent to Walgreens health and beauty rebates. Love it!
More about Menards
September 30th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
November 6th, 2006 at 07:09 am
In addition to this horrendous policy, you can't make a payment in their own stores. "The system does not take cash payments." How antiquated is that in the year 2006? Is it possible to accept cash payments? Absolutley! Afterall you can return merchandise and have it credited to your account. Why not give them cash and have it credited to your account?
Regarding rebates. All rebates are for in-store purchases only. The mark up on items in the store are at least 100%. Meaning if you get a $2.00 rebate certificate, it's true value is $1.00. Because you can only use it in their store. Real rebates come in the form of a cash checks not in-store certificates.
Menards makes it all seem wonderful, but the bottom line is that the whole system is designed to get you to use your Big Card, so they can make their money on interest and late fees. If Menards was truly for the customer, why don't they make it more convenient to make a payment on your card in the stores themselves?
For the record Home Depot, Best Buy, Kohls, Sears, JC Penney, and Lowes all allow you to make payments on your credit card in their stores. Menards is all about money, cheap products and fan fare. I use Menards for ancillary things and Home Depot for true quality merchandise!
November 24th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
November 28th, 2006 at 06:53 am
November 28th, 2006 at 11:08 am
December 14th, 2006 at 07:23 am
December 31st, 2006 at 02:09 pm
January 1st, 2007 at 01:30 am
January 21st, 2007 at 08:53 pm
February 15th, 2007 at 02:30 pm
But the rebates and coupons are nice.
February 27th, 2007 at 02:06 pm
March 9th, 2007 at 01:38 pm
March 16th, 2007 at 09:03 am
March 19th, 2007 at 11:25 am
April 18th, 2007 at 07:59 pm
Of course Menards is about taking your money. I work for them. Think about that statereement and apply it to Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Meijer, Walgreens, and every other retailer out there. Sure we are there to provide a service, but the bottom line is making money. John Menard didn't get into the business over 50 years ago for any reason other than to take your money. Thats not just Menards, thats any business.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:53 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 04:36 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 10:52 am
They try to make it hard for you to not get a rebates (I guess). I have no complains about the price front, but I know ace provides lot of rebates for free, they send the checks which can be cashed anywhere and the rebate checks usually arrive within 30 days of filing. Here I have 45 days and I cannot even see my rebates yet online.
May 4th, 2007 at 07:59 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 11:01 am
1. To Brian Stafford, I've personally made credit card payments at both Home Depot and Best Buy.
2. To Menard's employee, Finance companies do make their money per what you said, but it is up to the company as to what kind of contract they make with "retail services" and can easily opt to allow payments in store. Thank you for confirming the 100% markup on store items, and you are right many are only 10 - 20%.
3. Van Natter pay attention to #2 above
4. To BV, excellent use of low-level terms. An individual uses terms such as yours when they don't have anything intelligent to say.
5. To Gunz, you are right, but John Menard could let his customers make their payments in his own stores couldn't he? After all, what is the right or decent thing to do?
6. To Matt Justinak, sorry for your unpleasant experience. In most workplaces, there's always one bad manager who has a God complex.
7. To Mary, thanks for confirming my experiences.
8. To Coupon queen, Can you say loss leader? Many companies put items on sale at below cost prices to get people in their stores. Even free, it is still a tool to get you in the store. Haven't you ever seen eggs for 19 cents a dozen at Easter time - they might as well be free? Or Turkeys for 29 cents a pound at Thanksgiving time? The Free stuff is to get you in the store. Are these items expensive to start with or are they cheapo things? They're loss leaders. Give something away and you'll get'em in the stores, customers will come out with more than just the freebies!
In conclusion, I am definitely biased. Perhaps I've run into more knowledgeable people at Home Depot & Lowes. Maybe I've fallen for the Oak Floor sale that turned out to be a laminent oak floor, maybe I've spent 45 minutes in the paint section because the lady who was helping me didn't know what she was doing, or maybe I went to buy a simple hardware item and Menard's didn't carry it. Maybe I've had to bag my own merchandise and had to make sure I took my own receipt because the store is set up to save money by making the customer do it. Maybe when I read the phrase "rebate", I expect to get a check in the mail rather than another marketing instrument to get me to go back to the store. I don't know, all I know is that somewhere down the line Menards has let me down more than their competitors.
Have a great day and thank you all for your comments.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I need a rebate form for a Bowman Plymouth Handle and I can not find it anywhere on the rebate international website. I bought the handle at Menards and they did not have a form!
August 29th, 2007 at 09:52 am
November 3rd, 2007 at 08:42 pm
To even think they mark things up 100% is nuts... with the competition from lowes, home depot, and other big box retailers, they wouldnt stand a chance.
mendards will guarantee an 11% lower price then anyone. Home Depot, by far the largest mega hardware retailers can buy HUGE amounts of products for an unbelievably low price (its another walmart), if we promise an 11% lower price, were lucky if we make 3% profit on an item over $500.
However, there are some very reasonable critiques here. The rebate center isnt what people want. people want cash back, not store credit.
Next, the payments in cash on the big card in store. There is no reasonable explanation on why this cannot be done. EVERY OTHER MEGA HARDWARE RETAILER does this.
i will have to ask this during the next meeting.
The knowledge of employees. Menards has recently put in place a new policy that requires a department to now review one type of item a month. It includes going into details on how an item works, the most common questions asked by customers, and other various related items. There are a few problems with this.
#1. The training is only for items within that department. Hardware will never review a plumbing item.
#2. The majority of workers at menards are people under 25. This is usually the person first job, it could be that they are part time workers home from college, or just people who want a paycheck. With the high turnover rates, it would be nearly impossible to inform every new employee about the item.
My final point is that menards has a pretty liberal view of workers. they are satisfied (to an extent) withemployees as long as they continue to show up at work on time. If i had it my way, you do a bad job, you are out the door.. i wish the store would follow this policy.
November 15th, 2007 at 06:56 am
January 16th, 2008 at 02:55 pm
Just my opinion but you seem to be a Home Depot Employee!Many of your facts (fairy tales) are just untrue!!! A little more research and a little less talking! You sound smart but you truly are retarded!!!!
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:20 am
Note: if you keep good (say scanned) records be sure to scan the checks when they come in. I was once able to spend the balance on one (printed out) that had not been returned to me by some new trainee. The courtesy counter simply scanned my printout and gave me the odd amount on gift certificate.
April 12th, 2008 at 04:28 pm
April 30th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
May 12th, 2008 at 03:07 pm
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
May 27th, 2008 at 07:09 pm
Menard's makes big money on their lumber. Any business major knows that you don't dedicate that much square footage on products with minor markups. It is not economical nor cost effective. A store has to average a certain dollar profit per square foot or it won't survive.
The bottom line is that Menard's is the bottom feeder. They are the Walmart of home improvement stores. (Both of which are making a ton of money). I originally wrote because their credit card is one of the worst in the industry and I stand by this. As far as Home Depot and Lowes. I guess I like to go into a store with some class rather than one that makes you feel like your an inconvenience.
Also this semester I talked with 5 of my students who work at Menards and the general consensus is that they pay lousy (like Walmart) and it's just a job.
May 29th, 2008 at 05:06 am
August 12th, 2008 at 03:10 pm
You are incorrect. In the future please do not make assumptions, back up your statement with facts.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Having been in the workforce for about nine years now (and I have worked at many different places) I have yet to find a part time job that pays that much. So don't generalize, folks. Did those people on here who said that Menards paid crappy even know how much they pay? Do I want to make nine bucks an hour for the rest of my life? No way. But for now its fine, and if I wanted to stay with the company, I could live quite comfortably as I moved up the ladder..
November 18th, 2008 at 10:40 am
bitter comments against me and publishing
this person information about me on their
-this marketing website about their company.
I guess I was wrong about me saying anything
nice about them being a good company.
I know that their manager or someone that
was doing a background investigation from their
store gave this information to st cloud state,
where I was attending college at the time
and caused my veteran counselor to tell
a couple of the professors about what I
had to say and they decided to use my freedom of
speech against me. What they did was
manage to cause one of my instructors in the
school of business to make my online course
unbearable for me because I could not
read the half the questions to the
online quizes and tests that one of the instructors
their was giving me(because they were intentionally
blotted out so that they were unreadable). I guees
they were trying to make an example of someone who disagrees with the established beauracracy of colleges and companies these days. You should contact them and ask them why they decided to publish this defamation of character information about me. Either one of their employees,a student, my counselor, merrill corp.(as I worked for spherion temp agency in minneapolis and st paul, shortly before attending school in st cloud), or one of my instructors I had at the time I attended school there is responsible for the defamation of my character. It could also be someone afiliated with the MN army or air national gaurd as well. Maybe next time, the people who have nothing better to do than sit at a computer all day and make my public comments viewable to the public, should be held legally responsible for their actions. It is sad that we have come down to a society that judges people based on virtual technology. I don't want to know what anybody thinks about this information either, just simply either print this blog or delete the previous comments I made- simple. If whoever is responsible for this website cannot do that, then shame on them because they are simple cowards hiding behind a computer and liable to make up other things, as well.
November 18th, 2008 at 03:55 pm
January 28th, 2009 at 12:29 am
January 29th, 2009 at 10:35 am
January 29th, 2009 at 06:19 pm
January 30th, 2009 at 09:29 am
*Menards managers must sign agreements in which they consent to being personally penalized for things that go wrong. For instance, having 15 carts in the parking lot draws a $10 fine. And they must pay $100 per minute if they open late.
*Managers are forbidden from building their own homes, as protection against the possibility that they may steal building materials. And private investigators have been hired to check whether employees who undertake even minor home-improvement projects are using pilfered supplies.
Eldon Helget, a Menards lumber yard manager in Burnsville, Minnesota, felt he needed to build a new home to accommodate his wheelchair-bound daughter. So he accepted a demotion with a $15,000 salary cut. When John Menard learned of this deal, he fired Helget. And then, when another lumber yard offered him a job, Helget had to go to court to get out from under a Menards contract clause that barred him from working for a competitor for a year.
*Menards is aggressively anti-union. Norm Baumann, a former assistant store manager in Wausau, said he was made to attend a day-and-a-half-long seminar about fighting unions. "If a person had ever worked at a union shop, you couldn't hire them," Baumann told the magazine, adding that he once had to fire two promising management trainees because they had worked in high school as baggers at a unionized grocery store.
*Dissent or disagreement of any kind is not tolerated. Steve Faber, a former store manager in Iowa, said he suddenly began getting negative reviews and was ultimately replaced (he was offered a lower-paying job but quit instead) after he questioned a new rule requiring managers to pay a $200 deductible if a delivery driver they hired was in an accident. (I'm not making this up.)
*According to former store manager Scott Bropst, Menards once deducted $2,000 from the bonus of a manager in North Dakota, on top of reducing his pay, because he put in just 35 to 40 hours -- not the required 55 -- when his wife gave birth to triplets, two of whom eventually died.
*Menards has a long history of being an environmental scofflaw, paying at least $3.8 million in fines since 1976 for ignoring or violating state law. In 1997, John Menard was caught using his own pickup truck to haul ash contaminated with chromium and arsenic to his home, to toss out with the regular trash.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
you give us all this information and neglect to say where these "facts" came from.... what are your sources?
i've got one source for you... first hand experience... since my last post i have become a manager at Menards and let me tell you a couple of FACTS:
you CANNOT get fired if you talk bad about Menards. I could say anything I want about them and they can't do a damn thing about it... especially here on this site... first off, you use a fake name, so why would anyone who worked at Menards care what they said on here? We don't get on here and say good things about the company because we're afraid of getting fired... if that were the case, why would we say anything at all? to insinuate that George is only saying what he did because he could get fired is not only ill-informed, it's laughable.
secondly, managers do NOT have to sign some contract saying they agree to be personally fined if something goes wrong. that's bull. the only fines you have to worry about are payroll and inventory fines if you don't make it.... AND if you DO make it, you get bonuses that GREATLY outweigh the fines... so that seems fair to me! but there is NO contract involved.
i don't know where you get this crap about employees can't build their own homes and private investigators... thats just a lie. I personally know someone who is building onto his own home and gets all of his supplies from Menards. And i seriously doubt they would hire private investigators... they have a killer security system in place and if anyone is stealing, they WILL see you!
there are plenty of people at MWnards who have worked in a union before. While Menards does not have a union, they are not ANTI-union, and they cannot stop you from forming one should you choose to do so (at least in Ohio)
and you don't get fired or demoted just for disagreeing with a rule or a boss. believe me, i have disagreed with plenty, went to my boss to discuss it, and everything has always been fine. So there must be a lot more to the story that this "Scott" guys you speak of is telling...
so.... what are your sources for these "facts" again?
April 24th, 2009 at 08:50 am
July 28th, 2009 at 10:45 pm