Avoiding undesirable gifts.....

[jackstarlightstarbright]

Amazon patents procedure to let recipients avoid undesirable gifts

"Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them...the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships."

Great idea or a recipe for trouble?

[DrSeuss]

Appalling idea but very useful given the bizarre choices made by my in laws!

[jackstarlightstarbright]

DrSuess - would you tell your in-laws that you had 'returned' their gifts before you'd even received them?

And what if they worked out that you had added their names to your 'lousy gift givers' list?

Amazon are also considering a service which sends thank you notes for the original unwanted gift .

[DrSeuss]

Really rude, but if they are offering the service there must be a demand...
In laws live at the other end of the country and have some bizarre ideas of what I want for Christmas.

[thumbplumpuddingwitch]

Interesting! Goodness knows whether or not it's a good idea, but given the amount of stuff that gets returned after it's been given, it's probably a very useful "cut out the middle man" process.

Is it ruder to return a gift you don't want/like than to send a gift that is unwanted/unlikeable? A question that always has me pondering...

[jackstarlightstarbright]

Amazon are trying to reduce the cost of having a large number of gifts returned (upto 30% of purchases are returned).

But whether consumers will use it is the unknown.

My main worry is that I'll be on all my family and friends lousy gift giver lists . What if the lists were leaked? Would Wikileaks publish a league table of the worst gift givers?