Online Gift Certificates
What do you get for the person who has everything? The person who lives across the country? The person who you, until this very day, forgot to get a gift for? This really isn’t a trick question. The answer is an online gift certificate, and let them choose their gift.
Most online stores such as Amazon.com, Buy.com and Outpost.com offer gift certificates that can be emailed to the recipient. With the boom of online buying, web stores have expanded their marketplace. Where Amazon.com used to be just another bookstore, it’s now expanded to contain DVDs, toys, games, music, and electronics. Other stores have followed suit, and now it’s easy to please everyone when you pick an online merchant.
How does it work?
It’s easy! When visiting an online merchant such as the ones I listed above, there are two things you can look for on their site to purchase a gift certificate. Let’s look at Amazon.com. On their home page, on the left side contains navigation to browse. If you look at that entire list, down at the bottom it says “Gifts and Gift Certificates”. Clicking on the Gift Certificates link will bring you to the Gift page, which contains a section to purchase a gift, and a link to buy a gift certificate.
Buy.com also contains a gift center that is easy to find. Right on the home page is a link that says Gift Center.
It’s as easy as filling out the gift amount, and using your credit card to pay for it. You can then fill in the recipient’s email address, along with a message. You’re done! The online merchant will take care of sending the gift certificate to the recipient.
The recipient’s got it, now what?
Good question! The emailed certificate contains a gift code. When the user selects what they want, they put in their gift code upon checkout. The amount is deducted, and the purchase is made. This can be repeated over and over until your gift is all used up. It works much like modern-day gift cards, they look like credit cards instead of paper certificates, and can be re-swiped.
So forget the old days of fretting over the perfect gift. Let them choose their gift. And never have to worry about late gifts again. On the Internet, the shops are open 24 hours, and remember, a birthday never officially ends until midnight.
