SO, HOW are those resolutions going? Given that the new year has scarcely begun, there is some chance that your will remains as firm as it was on New Year’s Eve: the cigarettes have not been smoked, the wine has not been guzzled and you actually went to the gym. As we all know, however, a year is a long time to stay strong.Companies know it too, and some base their entire business model on our tendency to overestimate our willpower, our memory or our ability to navigate small print so devious that it would make Rumpelstiltskin blush.The most egregious example is the mail-in rebate, where a manufacturer or retailer will offer a discount but only after the customer fills in a form, attaches a receipt and mails the paperwork off with fingers crossed. There are a number of advantages to this — it may allow the manufacturer to gain information about customers, for instance — but surely the main reason companies use mail-in rebates is that they know some people aren’t as disciplined and o...
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