Gutierrez: Don't Extend Converter-Coupon Expiration Date

(6/27) Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the expiration date on the $40 DTV-to-analog converter box coupons Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is handing out should not be extended beyond 90 days, as some in Congress have asked for, likening it to the coupon on, say, a box of Frosted Flakes. "I had experience in couponing given my previous background in the cereal business [Kellogg]: 90 days is pretty much the expiration you have on most coupons," he told C-SPAN in an interview for its The Communicators series. "It's long enough to give consumers a chance to think about when they are going to buy and what they are going to buy, but it's short enough to force a decision.” Sec Gutierrez added that the longer the expiration date, the less redemptions there are and eventually the consumers forget they have them. "A lot of what we are doing here is similar to what you do in a packaged-goods industry.”[The redemption] should not be any longer," he said.
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