edawg

I've been living in the USA from UK for about 12 years now, and every Christmas we either send small gifts back by mail, which costs a fortune! Or, I'll send money over to the UK via PayPal.

My question is, do any of you do anything differently? Do you have any other good gift ideas that you do every year? Do you use Amazon.co.uk and ship from there?

Any ideas would be great because I think that my UK family just don't think I'm trying anymore! They've started to call me Father Predictable-mas!

Pulaski

Amazon.co.uk gift cards, by e-mail, can be taken care of on Christmas eve, or even early on Christmas day, with instant delivery and no mail or shipping charges, no wrapping, and no taxes/duty.

I have on occasion ordered a physical gift from Amazon.co.uk

Nutmegger

I use Amazon UK. I have gifts for my sister sent to my niece, and she wraps for me, and I have gifts for my niece and family sent to my sister, and she does the wrapping! When it isn't feasible to do that, I spring for the Amazon gift wrap service, which I find a bit exorbitant. And I sometimes use UK florists and local chocolate makers as well. I've also found things on eBay UK that I have sent directly to the recipients.

edawg

If I have a Prime Account(US), that probably won't work on the .co.uk Amazon site I would assume?

Thanks for your replies by the way.

Nutmegger

I would think it would. I don't use Prime, but I have an Amazon cc and it accrues points the same on the UK site as the US. Why don't you check directly on the site?

Weeze

Nope, your rime membership won't work on the UK site. I have prime, but only on the us one. Amazon uk is easy for gifts. As are the likes of John Lewis, boots, notonthehighstreet.com, tesco.

Bob

For my nephew, local online store and send something and perhaps a Red Sox shirt or some other sports thing that fits in a tiny bubble envelope.

For my mother, the missus normally knits something small and light, so we send that and a couple of small knick knacks that the kids have made.

As long as it's a small parcel and not to heavy, haven't spent more than $20 on postage.

Orangepants

I've been using UK online websites for ages - this is one of my favourites for Christmas esp for the soccer stuff (and in my home town) GoneDigging | Personalised Gifts

There was a thread this time last year called Christmas presents - good websites, which had some fab ideas. Don't know how to link it!

http://britishexpats.com/forum/usa-5...-pages-815399/

Pulaski

URL

scrubbedexpat027

I try to use amazon.co.uk whenever I can. My US Prime doesn't work on the UK site though.

I did try to get Next and Gap gift cards this year but both wouldn't accept my credit or debit card having a US address.

studentgwant

Another vote for Amazon here.

Orangepants

Well there was me thinking that today was a wasted day and then I learnt something new! Edited - Thanks

Pulaski

UR welcome.

You can also manually "program" a linked quote to a post in a closed thread, as I did yesterday in the opening post of my new What's your poison? thread. ..... Add the user name to the quote bracket, then add a ; and put in the seven digit number of the post, which you find by clicking on the sequential number in the thread of the post, so for this post it is #13. After clicking it the URL for that individual post appears in the browser address bar, with the post number on the far right end of the address.

edawg

Some really good ideas! Thanks for all the input so far!

BubbleChog

I mostly don't bother for the grownups. For my little relatives I either use amazon.co.uk to send books or I have also used gettingpersonal.co.uk, they have no issues with me using my US credit card and delivering to a UK address