A four-week hassle to get a $4 rebate

How far would you go for $4?

Jon Merritt deserves some kind of prize for running a corporate obstacle course to redeem a $4 rebate he was promised for a 20-pack of Miller Genuine Draft beer.

Mail-in rebates, as many of us have learned, can be a minefield of sneaky requirements and exclusions. Far be it from me to doubt the integrity of big businesses, but you almost suspect they don’t really want people claiming the money they’re due.

Most consumers might throw in the towel when confronted by intransigent service reps or the revelation of fine-print exemptions.

Not Merritt.

The 53-year-old stockbroker, who works in the Los Angeles office of a prominent Wall Street firm he’d rather not name, told me it’s just a matter of principle.

“When you buy something in a store and a promise is made, you deserve a fair shake,” he said.

In this case, Merritt was buying beer for a Memorial Day party and selected Miller over competing brands because the supermarket had cut the $20 price of a 20-pack to $13, and MillerCoors was offering an additional $4 in the form of the mail-in rebate.

“Twenty bottles of beer for $9 — that’s a pretty good deal,” Merritt said.

He said he peeled one of the rebate coupons from the store display and stuffed it with his receipt into his wallet. After the holiday weekend, he took a closer look.

Merritt said he could just make out the front of the 3-inch-by-2-inch coupon, which promised the $4 back. The back side, where all the fine print was, was another matter.

He put on his reading glasses to get a closer look. Still nothing but a blur.

“It’s the tiniest print I’ve ever seen,” Merritt said.

I’ll attest to that. Even with glasses on, I didn’t have a shot at deciphering the actual-size copy of the rebate coupon that Merritt faxed me.

Undaunted, Merritt enlarged the coupon on a copy machine. That’s when he learned that MillerCoors wouldn’t accept photocopies.

Trouble was, the original was so puny, Merritt said he couldn’t fill in his name, address, phone number, birth date and purchase location, as required for the rebate. “You reach a certain age, you just can’t write that small,” he said.

So Merritt called the company to see if something could be worked out. He said a service rep immediately declared that nothing could be done. Unwilling to accept that as the last word, Merritt tried again, this time calling the office of MillerCoors Chief Executive Leo Kiely.

He said an assistant to the CEO promised that someone would get back to him. A week passed. Nothing.

Merritt tried again, and again was told by the CEO’s office that someone would get back to him. Another week passed. He called again and left a voice mail. A week later — this would be last week — he called yet again.

And this time, someone from MillerCoors did call back. Merritt said the rep instructed him to send in his receipt and proof of purchase, along with the itty-bitty coupon, which he now wouldn’t be required to fill out. The $4, he was told, would be forthcoming.

Julian Green, a MillerCoors spokesman, acknowledged that company records show that Merritt contacted the company after Memorial Day and that a service rep had been unable to assist him in dealing with the fine print.

But he said the rebate coupon and its contents “fall within industry standards.”

Green also wanted to know why, if the coupon was so hard to fill out, customer-service records show that Jon Merritt submitted no fewer than three other rebate coupons throughout the month of June. Something fishy, perhaps?

Perhaps not. Green acknowledged that, upon closer inspection, the other coupons were for a Jon Merritt who lives in Oakdale, near Modesto — not L.A.

“It’s not me,” said the L.A.-based Merritt. “I don’t drink that much beer, and I don’t even know where Oakdale is.”

I wrote recently about money-back coupons offered by CVS Caremark and the way many companies deliberately make it hard to claim a reward, thus minimizing the hit to their bottom line.

Merritt said he’s an avid coupon clipper and is willing to jump through an extra hoop or two. But he said MillerCoors tilted the paying field by printing a coupon too small to read and then trying to weasel out of making it right.

“Four calls to the company?” Merritt said. “That’s way too much.”

It is, and most of us probably wouldn’t have kept at it, not for a measly four bucks.

“To be honest,” Merritt said, “what I wanted wasn’t really the $4. I wanted them to acknowledge that the design of the coupon was terrible and for them to say they’d do something about it. They never said that.”

Why would they? From MillerCoors’ perspective, you could say the coupon worked exactly as intended.

David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.