The boughs of holly have all wilted, Auld Lang Syne is a fuzzy memory and the relatives have finally cleared off, but it’s likely that you are still harbouring some unwelcome guests in the house.
A study by the market research firm ICM reports that we received a staggering £4 billion worth of unwanted presents this Christmas — unguents, novelty cufflinks and executive toys that we now don’t know what to do with.
The answer, of course, is to recycle those unholy items by selling them online. If you can’t sell them, swap them for other items or for vouchers, or give them to a worthy cause. Just remember that one man’s detested novelty mug gift item is someone else’s treasured possession.
1 SELL THEM ON
The auction site eBay has come up with a feelgood term for the guilt-laden flogging of your Christmas presents: rehoming. A search for “unwanted gift” produces 1,477 hits that included a Playboy Zippo Lighter, Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh purple slippers and three men’s jumpers (large).
But it’s not what you sell, it’s the way that you sell it, says www.bytestart.co.uk, a small business portal that offers crucial hints on online selling. In highly competitive fields such as CDs, jewellery or make-up, you have to make your items stand out. Employ easy-to-read fonts, such as Times Roman, and good pictures — images sell products online (use a contrasting and preferably light-coloured background).
If you want the cash but can’t face the hassle, then the experienced eBay sellers behind www.stuffusell.co.uk will sell your pressies for you, and they will even pick up the item from you. The site takes a hefty whack (£25 if something sells for £60) but claims to have a history of more than 9,000 successful transactions and has a 99% positive feedback rating.
It also offers helpful advice: goods that are easy to sell include consumer electronics, sporting items, CDs and DVDs and these should be in their original packaging with instruction manuals where appropriate.
You can also sell your unwanted goods at Amazon’s Marketplace for a fee (17% of the sale price). Unlike eBay, this is more like a car boot sale than an auction and you set the price. Even better: your used, collectable and refurbished items are sold alongside new ones on the site.
2 SWAP SHOP
You are unlikely to do as well as Kyle MacDonald who traded a red paperclip for a house in 14 swaps (http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com), but you could swap your unwanted Simon and Garfunkel CD for something you really want. Easy to do and environmentally sound, swapping has taken off online. SwapXchange.org is a national bulletin board where you can list your unwanted gift and the item you want (a ladies’ bike for a portable television; slate table tops for fishing gear), or simply offer your goods up to all and sundry, and see what items people are willing to swap.
CDs and DVDs are a relatively thought-free present that nobody will discover you offloading. At www.swopex.com you can exchange CDs, DVDs and games for credits that you can then spend on something else on the site — Nat King Cole’s All for You or Madonna’s latest album, for example. If Santa didn’t bring you the full-size replica Dalek, or the guitar you were after, you can find one at www.swapz.co.uk where anybody can swap anything.
There are new books for old at www.readitswapit.co.uk, a free book swapping service, where the only charge is postage (on average £1.39-£1.70). Among the titles made available are Pompeii by Robert Harris, and Jack Maggs by Peter Carey.
3 HOW TO ‘REGIFT’
Regifting, as was once explained in Seinfeld, the American sitcom, is giving as a present something that someone once gave to you. This is an admirable, but potentially fraught way of recycling the unwanted on the unsuspecting; and if you are exposed as a dreaded regifter, it can turn you into a pariah.
So first read MSN’s 12 rules for regifting without fear at http://tinyurl.com/wav6p. These start with “Do take out the previous gift card. Duh.” The article also highlights the duds that cannot be regifted without being easily rumbled (candles, soap, random books, mysterious CDs, obscure software, cheesy jewellery, pens and cologne are the kinds of things people try to palm onto others), and suggests keeping a note of who gave you what to avoid returning a gift to its original giver. Horrendous.
If you are one of the estimated one in 12 who still hasn’t used gift vouchers 12 months after they were given to you, www.unwantedvoucher.co.uk is happy to help. It will offer you 70-90% of the face value if the tokens are between £10 and £300 in value and come from the likes of Argos, Asda, Boots, Comet, Goldsmiths, Habitat, John Lewis, Sainsbury, Tesco, Virgin, or WH Smith. On the downside, it doesn’t publish its phone number — never a good sign online — but you can e-mail and request a call back.
4 GIVE IT AWAY
Of course, you could boost your karma points significantly by donating your unwanted sweaters, shoes or toys to charity. Heading to your local Oxfam branch is one good option, but if you are prepared to hang on to the items until the autumn, then Samaritan’s Purse (www.samaritanspurseuk.com) promises to distribute them to child victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster as part of its yearly Operation Christmas Child campaign.
Or you could just post the goods on www.freecycle.org, a recycling site where surfers can then take them off your hands for free. There is one main rule: everything posted must be free, legal and appropriate for all ages. Among the current offerings are an artificial Christmas tree (used once), a narghile (or hubble bubble pipe) and an Aiwa stereo system with (unused) karaoke machine.
If you are beginning to feel queasy about cashing in your gifts, use eBay to donate between 10% and 100% of the profits to charities such as the Samaritans, for whom Christmas and new year is the busiest time.
5 RETURNS POLICY
If you have not already had the “Do you have the receipt?” conversation with the giver of an unwanted gift, it is definitely too late to have it now. From here on, you are alone with only your statutory rights for comfort. What these boil down to is explained at www.consumerdirect.gov.uk — you have no automatic right to a refund unless the goods are faulty, misdescribed or not fit for purpose.
Good retailers may, of course, have their own more generous terms. This Christmas Amazon, for example, has extended (and much improved the use of) its returns policy. Items dispatched between November 1 and December 31, 2006, can be returned before midnight on January 31, 2007, for a full refund.
In general, online retailers are obliged only to offer a seven-day return period, and as www.tradingstandards.gov.uk explains, even then some goods, such as food or goods made to order, are exempt.
Even if individual shops offer refunds, it’s up to them if they insist on a receipt. If you don’t have one, and if you have no shame at all, ask if you can have a gift voucher instead, then flog it for cash on eBay or www.unwantedvoucher.co.uk. Sorted.
