Free samples as a gift

[boingbat]

Please settle an argument that's been rumbling since Christmas Day.

My husband acquired some free miniature samples from Clarins. He gift wrapped them and gave them to me for Christmas. He thinks I am being unreasonable because I didn't appreciate that he'd gone to the effort of wrapping them. I think he's being unreasonable for wrapping them in the first place.

His sister's fiancé got the full size product. At least he was doing his fair share of the Christmas shopping so I won't LTB just yet

A mug? So something cheap which you can buy any day of the year? I would be upset.

I would be so tempted to use the idea for his birthday. Any sauce sachets or free samples would be lovingly wrapped in a big box with a bow. Along with something useful...like a spoon.

What did you buy/give him? Perhaps you only give token gifts to each other as so much is spent on wider family members - maybe?

YANBU. Sounds as if he spent less money on you than your sister’s fiancée .

justanother thats hilarious x

Even worse, was the full size present he bought financed and from both of you? So he got the free samples by using joint money?

Thats a properly shit present. Especially since he only got them buying lovely things for someone else.

Save everything you get free all year amd wrap them up. Metro newspapers, free gifts with magazines, sugar sachets, etc etc

wow, even my teenage ds got me better presents than that. Free samples as a main gift , pretty poor

Not good if the full-size products went to someone else.

They're a stocking-filler, additional present.

But ... your main present was a mug.

So - what was the main present like? Was it OK? I think he really should have put the Clarins freebies in that, to be honest.

Gojng forwards, different people have different expectations when it comes to presents. For some people, presents are important; for other people, they aren't so much. You need to work out where you stand on the present-giving continuum, not feel guilty about it, and then explain to him what you need (small, jokey presents; larger, thoughtful presents; things you need but wouldn't buy for yourself during the year - everyone's different).

I'm guessing that you're particularly cross because the actual Clarins products were a gift for someone else. If he can put that much thought into someone else's present, it's going to be galling that he didn't do it for you. Plus, he passed off the freebies from that other person's gift as a present to you. That would annoy most people.

To be honest the mug was really nice and would have been enough, it was more the fact that he acted like I was ungrateful when I questioned why he'd wrapped a bunch of free samples. Definitely going go for sauce packets for his birthday, love it!