Gifts from your mail-incapable relative

March 9, 2015 2:00 PM

A bunch of Go You! things have happened in my friends'/relative's lives: engagements, babies, etc and I'd like to send them each a little something. But I suck at mailing things (seriously, I was meant to return something to Amazon and just had to eat the cost b/c I failed to get it in the mail in time) Thus I'd like to internet-send them something maybe $10. Something general and nice--the object equivalent of a card. I would just send them a card but I'd never mail it. Thoughts?
posted by Calicatt to Shopping (13 answers total)

Amazon has email-able gift cards. They're like the old-school e-cards that were all the rage in the late 90's, where you chose whatever goofy picture you wanted and typed whatever message you wanted, entered your friends' email, and the web site you were on would email that to them. This is pretty much the same thing, only they also will attach a link that your friend can click on to redeem a $10 Amazon store credit for whatever they want.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:04 PM on March 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Why not get them snapfish gift certificates? It's a photo printing service. You just upload your photos and they print and mail them to you.. or you can pick them up at places like walmart.
posted by royalsong at 2:09 PM on March 9, 2015

There are services that will mail a card for you, like moonpig. You just order it online.
posted by corvine at 2:17 PM on March 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you have Amazon Prime, it's very easy to buy a small, prime-eligible gift and have it shipped to someone else (free shipping). Amazon gift cards are always good, too, but a small item that you picked out just for me would feel more special. Speaking just for myself, a Snapfish gift certificate would never be used.
posted by bonheur at 2:22 PM on March 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Cardstore lets you design and personalize cards and send them directly to your recipient through the website. You can even upload an electronic signature if you like.
posted by RainyJay at 2:30 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you have Amazon Prime

If you don't have Amazon Prime, it's easy enough to sign up for the free 30-day trial so you can use it to send gifts like bonheur suggested. But you have to remember to cancel it before the free trial ends!
posted by kate blank at 3:18 PM on March 9, 2015

Nthing Amazon for small gifts. Some items come with free shipping from China, so I'll treat myself to some geegaw and then forget about it until it arrives a month later. When it finally shows up, it's a happy surprise.

There's another outfit I've had good results from called banggood.com: pretty much the same deal, cheap toys shipped on a slow boat from China.

And yes, I'll sometimes gift things to people. Some of the more fun ones:

- (green) laser pointer
- CREE LED flashlight (sometimes for like $4)
- USB powered LED lights
- cheap weird watches (for about $10 you can find some strange ones; they probably won't last the week, but while they work, they're fun)
- Lindor chocolate truffles (every so often someone on Amazon will have a box of 60 for like $15 - great for college students)

Another thought: you can gift apps from the Apple App Store to people. The Google Play store may offer this, too. An ungodly number of options there. Off the top of my head, the Moog Filtatron is a very nice, high quality soundFX app that requires no musical skill.
posted by doctor tough love at 4:28 PM on March 9, 2015

The problem that I see with some of these suggestions is that the item just shows up at their house, with no explanation. All the cute little Amazon items from China have basically zero capacity for adding a little note. Even on real Amazon stuff, where you check "this is a gift" and then type "Happy Birthday Sally, love from Aunt Ethel", that note is pretty microscopic among the papers. If you pay the $5+ to have the item gift-wrapped, the typed message is larger and more noticeably placed, but is still just a couple of lines of text, black TimesNewRoman on white printer paper. I wish they did an "include a card" option with a bit more style, but so far as I know, they don't.
posted by aimedwander at 5:16 PM on March 9, 2015

I buy things off Etsy and just beg the sellers to ship directly to the gift recipient.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:18 PM on March 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

For examples, glitter magnets, pacifier chains, and bath salts are all things I've ordered for inexpensive gifts sent directly. Every seller I've worked with has been happy to ship for me -- I've literally never had anyone say no.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:19 PM on March 9, 2015

The problem that I see with some of these suggestions is that the item just shows up at their house, with no explanation. All the cute little Amazon items from China have basically zero capacity for adding a little note.

Alas, this is indeed true for many of these items. But it's sometimes possible to be a little creative and, say, call the person in advance and do a cheesy Carnac the Magnificent impression "you ... will receive a package ... from China!" or something like that. They're Cheap Thrills, they ain't perfect. And - at least with my friends and family - a green laser pointer will cancel out a LOT of awkward.
posted by doctor tough love at 8:28 PM on March 9, 2015

Oh sorry I should have added: I ask the sellers to put in a post-it note saying "All my love, DarlingBri" or whatever. I do NOT ask for anything complicated. 100% of the time they say yes. 75% of the time they do something extra free of charge to make it a nice note or whatever.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:36 PM on March 9, 2015

Yeah I bet you could find a card maker on etsy and reach out to them directly to see if they will actually just write what you want in the card and mail it as a normal card.
posted by magnetsphere at 8:03 AM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]