to: [e-mail] subject: a gift for you

March 31, 2009 11:08 AM

If you want to send someone a classy thank you gift, e.g. wine, chocolates or flowers, what are the best options if all you have in terms of contact info is the person's email address?

I don't want to send a gift certificate. I don't want to ask for a street address, because that will be a give away.

I want something along of lines of "Grumblebee has sent you some _____ wine. Click here to redeem." Then they enter their street address and the wine is sent to them.

Recipients are in the U.S., as am I.

posted by grumblebee to computers & internet (7 comments total)

It's doable but it might be viewed as being a virus or spam.
posted by watercarrier at 11:22 AM on March 31

If the email address is linked to a wishlist on Amazon, you can do the following:

- Select an item from the wishlist, put it in the shopping cart.
- Put the item you really want to send in the shopping cart.
- Remove the first item (from the wishlist) from the shopping cart.
- check out.

This isn't exactly "Grumblebee has sent you some xxx, click here" but it will get a surprise to them without their giving their physical address.
posted by anastasiav at 11:36 AM on March 31 [1 favorite]

This seems like a situation where a gift certificate (if you prefer, to a place with lots of classy things) is in order. Also, wine might be a problem depending on where the recipient lives.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 11:39 AM on March 31

I feel like this might be better solved by social engineering and finding someone else who knows the person's home or work address. Alternately you could ask for a mailing address to "send a thank you card" and then send something nice and/or fancy. Also googling that address can often turn up other things that might have address information on it. Other places to check: facebook (some people have street addresses listed), linkedin.com (for a work address) or university directories. I realize this isn't exactly what you asked for but if I were solving this problem this is how I would approach it.
posted by jessamyn at 11:42 AM on March 31

I just did a bunch of work for someone and was going to resist letting them get me something in return, until they told me

If you don't send me your mailing address so I can send you something to thank you then I'm going to throw a tantrum and you're going to be responsible.

It worked -- it was silly enough that it wasn't awkward and straightforward enough that there was no doubt about why they wanted my address.
posted by mendel at 11:57 AM on March 31

anastasia, your Amazon-wish-list idea sounds, great, except that I have no idea what you're talking about after the wishlist item goes in the cart.

Why remove it, then put something else in? Are you trying to say, "If you want to send item X, which is not on their wishlist, start with item Y"?
posted by IAmBroom at 12:47 PM on March 31

To clarify the Amazon wish-list idea, adding an item from someone's wishlist will allow you to send it to them without their address being revealed. You can select an address that's listed as "Jane Doe's wishlist address" or whatever. In order to be able to select this address, you need to have added an item from their wishlist to the cart, then added whatever real thing you want to give them, then selected their address, then deleted that wishlist item later in the checkout process, after the address was selected but before providing payment. Does that make more sense?
posted by booknerd at 2:32 PM on March 31