How many unwanted presents did you get this Christmas?

Dealing with unwanted presents

Most people don’t do anything! Three in five consumers hold onto gifts they don’t want, according to a survey from Kijiji.com, a free online classifieds site.

The top reasons are:
they don’t want to hurt the feelings of the giver (60 percent)
they think they will eventually use the gift (51 percent)
it’s too much effort to return them to the store (33 percent)

If you can get past these hesitations, here are five things to do with unwanted, ill-fitting holiday presents.

1. Use an unwanted gift card to buy a gift for someone else. Think ahead to any birthdays, parties, or celebrations coming up in the next six months. Anybody retiring? Getting married? Having a baby?

2. Re-gift! Sometimes you’ll come across an appropriate recipient a few days later at another holiday function, but more likely you’ll stash an unwanted gift in your gift closet (a designated area at home for evergreen gifts). Make sure you remove anything that would indicate the item was re-gifted and do not mention you are re-gifting to the recipient, which is extremely rude. Some people feel re-gifting is tacky, but I say it’s better to re-gift than let a present go to waste!

3. Sell gift cards you’re not going to use, especially if you think the store has a chance of closing. Here is the low-down on the best sites to sell gift cards. PlasticJungle.com, GiftCardRescue.com or GiftCardBuyBack.com

4. Exchange the gifts for something you want. If you don’t have a receipt, head to the store ASAP. Without a receipt, you’ll only get credit for the current selling price. Macy’s is one of the few stores that embeds the sale price in a bar code sticker so you can get credit for exactly what the giver paid. A lot of retailers softened their return policies to make it easier on us consumers and some are giving as much as a month after the holiday to return and/or exchange.

5. Sell presents online. Craigslist, Kijiji, eBay, Amazon. The Internet is your oyster.
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