I am terrible at figuring out what gifts to get people for their birthdays, the holidays, or any other occasion. Typically, my gift hunting begins a few days before the event, and I go to some online store and hope to find something. I have been doing this for many years now and have discovered a few sites that make this search a lot easier.
To help others who often find themselves in the same boat as me – scrambling to find presents for people, I am reviewing some of my favorite online gift retailers. This review takes a close look at Gifts.com.
About Gifts.com
Founded in 2005, Gifts.com’s stated mission is to help its customers find the ideal gift every time. They also pride themselves on offering more than just ideas. They also provide a wide array of tips, tools, and inspiration to make every day a reason to celebrate. This is in addition to their spot on gift suggestion services.
Gifts.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Interactive Group based out of Colorado. They are known for running a large selection of ecommerce companies, such as QVC, Bodybuilding.com, Shari’s Berries, Evite, and more.
Over the years, Gifts.com has won a range of awards. Webby Awards, Modern Bride Magazine, US News & World Report, Chicago Sun Times, and The Oprah Magazine are just some of the organizations and publications that have honored Gifts.com.
Gifts.com gets more than 285 million page views per year and have served over 100 million gift givers. They are able to make such great gift recommendations because their staff combs through tens of thousands of gifts every month to find the best ones and categorize them.
Top Features of Gifts.com
When you first visit Gifts.com, you will see that there are a variety of ways to shop. Along the top of every page are the options recipient, occasion, personality, and category. In addition, at the time I was writing this review, it was Christmas time, so there was a Christmas category. For this review, I was shopping for an anniversary present for my wife.
When you select one of the categories, it is further broken down into subcategories. For example, the top categories for my wife were tech gifts, clothing, food & sweets, books, and so on. In addition, this page features a couple articles with advice and tips on finding the right gift for one’s wife.
Once you choose a subcategory, you get into product listings, which you can then filter by price and other characteristics. The product pages typically have about half a dozen pictures of each item, so you can get a good look at what you are buying.
When you shop at Gifts.com, you are doing so risk free. They have a 30 day money back guarantee. Now, a lot of places will just have this for items that are defective or damaged. Gifts.com goes one step further. If the gift recipient is unsatisfied for any reason, they can get a full refund by returning the item within 30 days of the purchase.
Gifts.com offers a broad range of shipping options. Their least expensive option is USPS standard post, which takes two to eight days to deliver. Their fastest option is UPS Next Day Air, which gets the item where it needs to be by 10:30am the next business day.
One of my favorite features of Gifts.com is shopping by personality. They have a personality quiz you can take where you answer specific questions about the person you are shopping for. Gifts.com uses these answers to create a profile for that person with accurate gift recommendations. I used this to come up with a brilliant present for my wife.
Another feature is the “Gift of the Day.” This is described as “your daily dose of our most stand-out gift ideas.” It is essentially the bestselling items across categories. At the time I wrote this, the gift of the day was a Bluetooth speaker. Past gifts include jewelry, kitchen gadgets, and more.
One final feature worth mentioning is the reminders you can set up right on Gifts.com. When you log in with Facebook or create an account, you can get regular reminders of upcoming occasions, events, and birthdays, so you never forget again.
Gifts.com Prices
I am an unapologetic cheapskate. Fortunately, Gifts.com makes it incredibly easy for me to shop. There are two categories that were particularly helpful: Gifts under $50 for Men and Gifts under $50 for Women. In addition, you can easily adjust the filter on any category to include the prices you want.
Most of the gifts I found I had never seen anywhere else. To see how the prices compared, I did a Google search. The majority of the items were only offered on small ecommerce sites, and the prices were usually significantly more than what was listed on Gifts.com. Thus, you cannot beat their prices.
The one issue I did have with their prices was that a lot of the options for shipping to where I live were expensive. In some cases, the least expensive alternative for shipping was more than the cost of the product itself. Fortunately, almost all of the items on the site qualify for free shipping. You just need to spend $49 or more.
Criticism of Gifts.com
My biggest criticism is that the product pages are kind of lacking in information. One of the features I really like on ecommerce sites is user reviews. Gifts.com does not appear to have an option for this. Also, beyond a short blurb about the items, the product pages lack specifications about the gifts.
Another criticism I have is with their customer service options. There aren’t many. I will go into this in more detail in the next section.
To find out what others thought of Gifts.com, I explored different discussion boards. For the most part, users enjoyed their experience using this online retailer. There were a few complaints that had more to do with third party companies that have products listed on Gifts.com. You will want to learn the specific policies of the third party company you are buying from if you go that route.
Customer Support
The number of ways Gifts.com gives you to contact them was a little disappointing. There are no toll free phone numbers or any numbers at all for that matter. If you click on the “Contact Us” link on the bottom of their site, you are just given an email address. They do give you the opportunity to connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
To get some firsthand experience of how good their support is, I sent Gifts.com an email as well as a Facebook message. I sent my email during normal working hours and got a response within the hour. The Facebook message took a little bit longer, but I still got a full answer to my question within three hours.
Final Thoughts
Finding gifts for friends and family can be very stressful. Gifts.com does everything in its power to alleviate that stress with an array of tools designed to pinpoint the perfect present for your loved one. In that respect, Gifts.com hits the nail on the head. Within a few minutes, I was able to find the perfect gift for my wife. And, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: my wife loved her anniversary gift.
I highly recommend Gifts.com to anyone who is clueless about what to buy someone for a special occasion and wants a great deal on unique presents.
