I recently tried to get a rebate from Sandisk.
Yup, one's born every moment. Anybody who genuinely thinks rebate
"deals" are aboveboard is waiting to be taken for a ride.
Rebates are handled by third-party companies that have a vested interest in finding reasons
not to give you your money. Sandisk is no different from Canon, Olympus, Nikon, etc., etc. in that regard, so if you make your buying decisions on the basis of getting money from a rebate, you won't buy much. Yes, some people do get their money from rebates, but from everything I've read, they generally do plenty of work for it. Just google for rebate + scam.
--Oh, and I use Sandisk CF cards almost exclusively (I have a couple of old slow Lexars as backups); I've never had a problem with any of them. --but as others have said; for safety's sake you should always
copy the files from the card to the computer, and never use the computer to format the CF card.