Hello again, friends!
Sorry I've been so absent. I'm currently occupied with doing a lot of really important things (which I will tell you about as soon as they are ready to be disclosed) coupled with a whole lot of nothing at all. Hence...no blogging.
But, I have come up with something that I think is worthy of a discussion. Gift receipts.
Not ALL, gift receipts, per se, but more specifically.......gift receipts for books.
Last week, I purchased a book (one of my favorites, in fact) as a gift for someone. Being the holiday season, the cashier asked if I would like a gift receipt for the book. Being that it was, in fact, a gift...and being that it was something like 8:45 in the morning and I hadn't stumbled over to the coffee counter at the bookstore yet....I said yes. I then proceeded to the coffee counter and went on my way to work. All fine.
About halfway through the day, I realized that due entirely to aforementioned morning syndrome circumstances, I didn't actually know how much the book cost me. So, I took it out of my bag to look at it. Because, well, most books have the prices stamped on the covers. It was then that I realized.....
Gift receipts for books are a dumb idea.
Ok, I see where the merit would come in if someone wanted to return the book and you'd paid for it with a credit card. The person would then either need to have your credit card to swipe for the credit and/or would end up getting nothing because the price would be credited back to you. A particularly sassy me thinks to this "maybe that will stop them from returning stuff I get them.....", but that's not really the spirit around this time, is it? However....if the point of the gift receipt is to give people a means to return something WITHOUT letting them know how much you paid for it.....then the gift receipt for the book is completely pointless. The price is on the back. Short of maiming the cover of the book, you cannot remove the price from it.
Next time someone asks me if I want a gift receipt at a bookstore....I'm going to ask "what's the point?" and see what they say.
Those are my thoughts for today. Stay tuned for a discussion on how heinous the acronym SAD is.....coming sometime soon (relatively).
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
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2 comments:
Because some stores won't take a return or exchange without a receipt, and when I buy a stack of books for various relatives (as we are a reading family) I need individual receipts to place in each one - on the off chance I've purchased them a book they already own.
That's why Gift Receipts for books are good ideas.
Fair point. I think I mostly just look at gift receipts in general as a way to let someone take stuff back without knowing the price. Since, typically, I'm anti taking stuff back (exchanges if you already own the item or it's the wrong size excluded), I think I harbor an unnecessary grudge against gift receipts as I see them as enablers.
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