To think 'experiences' are a bad gift to give someone?

[Ved]

Bought sometimes for around £30 to £40, but often end up costing the recipient much more to use them. (With travel expenses, and sometimes accommodation, as some of them take 3-4 hours or more to get to in a car, and even longer on a train or a bus?!)

AIBU to think no-one should be buying an 'experience' as a gift for someone, unless they know they want it?

It depends on the "experience". If it's local or a generic afternoon tea type thing then crack on. If it requires travel and/or other expensive add-ons then you'd better be covering them!

Case in point: my DH bought me a voucher to abseil off the i360 in Brighton. We live 100 miles away and it was a 6am thing so we had to stay over. We did this four times before we actually got to do the experience because it kept getting cancelled on the day due to high winds. Brighton isn't a cheap place to stay, particularly on the sea front. Cost an absolute fortune.

Okay, but hopefully someone wouldn't have bought it for you in that case. In our case the giver knew that we like cooking, and probably knew that we hadn't made handmade pasta before, so it was well judged. Importantly, it was genuinely local, with no restrictions on when it could be used, and required no further investment to use.

Yes of course, fair enough.

It depends. Giving someone a ticket to a special event on London might not be great if they live in Liverpool, but if it's something nearby and you know they'll like it, an experience can be a very appropriate gift.

Exactly. It is just something else you've got to arrange, and add to the conveyor belt of stuff you've got to sort/do on top of everything else. And, as many have said, it's an added expense for many too.

I had one of those Red Letter tokens and looked at many things such as spa days, cookery days, high teas etc but they were all away from here. to pay train on top with the stress of getting there and back it was no good. in the end I bought some bits and bobs like chocolates. i do not know if things have improved now but to be honest there are not that many posh places to do those kind of things and not driving makes it very difficult.
I would only buy this if I knew for sure it was what someone wanted and researched where you could do it first so people did not have same problem as me

I agree about the issue and that the pasta making workshop sounds amazing and I also have zero interest in chocolate, alcohol, and smellies.

With a thoughtless gift, you can just quietly regift it (if there is someone it is more appropriate for), or give it to charity - so there isn't cost or inconvenience to the receiver here, and the social protocol is usually to just say 'thank you' at the moment of receiving - either in person, or by text etc.

It is an inconvenience if you don’t have anyone to re-gift it to or any charity shops nearby and definitely not a chore I particularly want to do in winter when the paths are icy.

That's the thing you see, it's quite often nowhere near home. Unless it's tea and cakes for 2 at a posh hotel 5-8 miles away, (or something similar,) it's going to cause many people extra work, and the cost of trying to get there, and they need to take time of work if it's only available weekdays, and then there's the travelling time...

Similar to my experience, bought DH an experience connected to something he is very interested in. Mistake. He acted as though id bought him an afternoon to spend in the fires of every circle of hell! Eventually he graciously accepted it and went and quite enjoyed it, but never again!

I think you need to be very thoughtful about it and take into account travel and on costs. They can be ok.

We had a relative who kept giving us spa days and afternoon teas and our children cinema vouchers. One of our children is autistic, which they knew, and we had no childcare options at all, which they knew. He didnt even have a school place at that timd. He generally needed 2 to 1 care. He couldnt go to the cinema I always wonder what went through their head as they are nice people. I think they thought we needed a break but didnt really understand it was the situation meant no break not that we hadn't thought of going to a spa.

Yep, as I mentioned earlier, the same thing happened when I had a balloon flight. Fortunately, we lived around 7 miles from the site it left from at the time, so we didn't have far to travel, and didn't have to do much other than turn up at 6am.

But the majority of the other people (I think there were 16 of us in total,) lived further away - 30-40 miles a few of them, and it was cancelled FOUR times. I had success on the fifth attempt. Most of the rest of the people I met (when I actually managed to do it) had tried at least 2 or 3 times before and also had it cancelled each time. A few of them had booked hotels because of the 6am start! And a few of them had got someone else to take them, and that other person had taken their time out of their day (or weekend) to take them. Only to be told at 8pm the night before that it was cancelled. (Again!)

I did actually do that last year with one gift - I gave it back to the giver (detailed in my earlier post) - regardless, another experience I can't use has arrived this Xmas from the same person.

IMO you need to be absolutely sure that the person would enjoy it. Personally I’d run a mile from spa days, but family are all well aware.

Dh was once given a gliding lesson. As it happened he thoroughly enjoyed it, but while he was waiting to go, the instructor said, ‘Do you actually want to do this, or do you just feel you have to, because it was a present?’ 😂
So it must be common!

@parthyphibday

What I've found though - the difference with bad experience gifts:

With a thoughtless gift, you can just quietly regift it (if there is someone it is more appropriate for), or give it to charity - so there isn't cost or inconvenience to the receiver here, and the social protocol is usually to just say 'thank you' at the moment of receiving - either in person, or by text etc.

However, with an experience gift, the giver generally wants to hear when you are doing the experience, what it was it like etc, see the photos etc. putting pressure on the receiver to comply with the expense, inconvenience etc.

Exactly this. ^ Thoughtless gifts in general may be a bad idea, but thoughtless gift experiences are completely different, (and are much worse) for the reasons you have outlined. An experience can cause a lot of extra stress, and money, and time, and hassle, than just buying a gift that doesn't suit someone - eg, a Recipes For Steak book for a vegan.

It depends a bit. Theatre ticket vouchers for a theatre lover within an easy to reach theatre is different to an experience the person didn’t want much and is far away!

We were gifted some of our wedding, the type of voucher where you can pick from hundreds of experiences.

The whole process of picking one was tedious as locations were vague, dates were very specific and a lot of added extra charges added on top.

We ended up picking an afternoon tea and it ended up costing more using the voucher than it would have doing jt direct!

I think the fundamental problem is that giving presents is just difficult, and increasingly so. People turn to experiences in desperation because physical presents are also a minefield. We're expending a lot of money and effort on presents and I wonder what proportion of them are genuinely wanted. It would be better to just rein in the present giving.

Depends on the gifter - thoughtful ones will consider all aspects. We bought prom tickets for my in-laws and paid for their journey and accommodation as an example.

But yes, some people have tunnel vision no matter the intention.

I think you're generally right, but they can be good gifts in specific circumstances. Like if someone already does the thing (e.g. spa days) and you know they'll do it again, so would've spent the travel and extras money anyway.

This is the kind of thing I mean. They are giving an 'experience' voucher in good faith - probably - but it can end up causing more bother (and cost) for the recipient than it's worth... I know a number of people who have received an 'experience' and it's cost them more to redeem it/use it, than the voucher cost in the first place. Sometimes it ends up costing quite a bit more.

Someone I know had a ticket for the zip wire in North West Wales, and they live in south east Birmingham! It was a 7 hour round trip in the car, (around 300 miles in total,) and the experience lasted about 3 hours (including the waiting time, for their 'group' to be called, the walk to the place, the safety talk, prepping, kitting up etc etc, and getting back to the car afterwards. So, around 10 hours in all.

It was an exhausting day, and the time you are on the zip wire itself is less than a minute. A 10 hour day, and around £40-£45 petrol, for one minute on a zip wire across an old quarry.

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I got two for Christmas I love them. I love something to look forward to after Christmas
One is something I have wanted to do for a long time but would never buy for myself. The other is a luxury I have had before but only as a present and something I love
I don't have to travel for either though.

I'm glad you are pleased with yours.

Handy that you don't have to travel though!

I think context is everything. I remember at work when one of our colleagues had a 'big' birthday, someone suggested we get her a spa day but I pointed out that as she's a single mum to a child with complex needs who has no family locally, we'd be giving her a logistical problem rather than a present!

The inconvenience aspect has already been well covered here, I would add the expectation of photos as well showing you doing the 'thing'.

Case in point, someone bought ex-DH and me an experience of a boat tour on the Thames as a wedding gift. Neither of us had shown an interest in that and we lived in the west country so hardly local. The gift giver asked us repeatedly if we'd done our experience as they wanted to see photos. They were most put out when ex-DH eventually told them bluntly that we hadn't done it. The voucher expired in the end.

The packaged ones can be really misleading. I used to work at a heritage railway and one of the experience voucher companies sold a steam train and cream tea ticket. People thought they were getting one of our afternoon tea train rides, instead it was a return ticket plus the tea at a hotel a good 15 minute uphill walk from one of the stations. Thankfully they stopped offering it in the end.

I am really bad about booking things if given a voucher and it makes me feel panicky.