Avoid last-minute panic shopping at all cost

Lots of us leave our Christmas shopping to the last minute but there are ways to minimise the errors this approach may involve

THERE ARE JUST six sleeps to go, and while Santa Claus is all set and is just checking and rechecking his list, most of us are not so together and will spend the next few days running around like headless turkeys buying food, presents and ho-ho-hoing until we’re red in the face.

VOUCH FOR IT

The easiest present to lay your hands on now is undoubtedly a voucher. These can be sourced online through major retailers such as Amazon, or in high street stores, hotels, restaurants and, if you really love the recipient, high-end spas.

While they’re just a step up from cash – the one gift most people are extremely reluctant to give at Christmas time – vouchers are an ideal, if unimaginative last-minute present and one which will be greeted more warmly than some unfortunate talcum powder found gathering dust in your local pharmacy.

We asked on Twitter last week if people liked getting vouchers and what their favourites were. While there was some grumbling, more than 90 per cent of respondents said they actually liked them, with Arnotts, Brown Thomas and One4all vouchers being mentioned with great frequency.

More than 50 per cent of us will give vouchers as presents this year and the business has grown to be worth in excess of €300 million in Ireland each year.

The voucher market is not problem-free, however. Unlike cash, many vouchers have expiry dates – some last just six months – and these time limits are frequently not made clear to either giver or getter, which may explain why as many as 20 per cent of vouchers – or nearly €70 million annually – are never redeemed.

In addition to having time limits, some vouchers cannot be used during sales and retailers are under no legal obligation to offer change if a voucher is not redeemed in full. The problem of expiry dates has been joined by another, potentially greater problem which is a sign of our cash-strapped times – companies going out of business before a voucher can be redeemed.

If cash is used to buy a voucher and the company closes, then the holder becomes an unsecured creditor and has little or no chance of getting any money back. If a credit card had been used to buy the vouchers, it is possible (if not easy) for people to get a refund via the chargeback system credit card companies operate under.

The voucher world has been given a lift this year with the arrival on the scene of all manner of online deals sites, such as Groupon and LivingSocial. Rather than getting book vouchers – by far the most popular voucher in Ireland – you can pick up experiences, such as a drive in a Ferrari and trips to spas.

Groupon is making a big play for the market this year and has set up a special Christmas shop. Among the benefits, it says, are the fact that the voucher does not show the purchase price but the redeemable value so, if you get a 70 per cent discount on something cool, the recipient will only see what it is worth – not the bargain basement price you paid for it. And all vouchers are transferable. They do have expiry limits however, and in some cases these are even shorter than you would find with a regular voucher.

Sale statistics from mydealpage.ie, a site which monitors all daily deals in Ireland, indicate that more and more people are turning to online daily product specials this year to do their Christmas shopping. It has seen an increase of just over €1 million in spend in November when compared to its October figures giving a rise of 21 per cent for the month with an average of €188,900 being spent online every day.

The most popular gifts this year are breaks away in Irish hotels, lunch/dinner vouchers for restaurants and beauty treatments and electronics. Consumers are also stocking up on festive hampers in a bid to reduce the cost of food and wine bills this year.

THE LAST-MINUTE MEN

The trick to buying the perfect gift is to give yourself loads of time, do all the required research in September and October, listen out for what your nearest and dearest want and then make your purchases with surgical precision in November far from the maddening crowds of December.

If only. Last year we heard of Last Minute Man (it’s always men apparently) for the first time. A study reported that canny shop assistants are now being primed to spend the last hours of the Christmas season looking for panic-stricken people wandering the aisles of department stores with fear in their eyes.

The reason retailers are on the lookout for such people is not to help them, but to harm their wallets. Business Intelligence and mystery shopping company Retail Active reported that Last Minute Man was most at risk of buying stupid, overpriced and unwanted gifts. Rather than helping us, the retailing consultant spends weeks coaching staff in major retail chains in Britain on how to spot Last Minute Man. They have to look for someone looking through a wide variety of stock, not knowing what to buy and wearing a blank expression.

According to the experts, Last Minute Man can be subdivided into the feckless, the flathúlach and the flaky. There is the chap who comes in at the last minute and doesn’t give a rashers what he buys. His presents are as thoughtless as he is. Then you have the person who comes in and asks to be shown the most expensive fragrance and goes with that. He is as thoughtless as the previous guy but has more money to spend. The third type is the one who just hasn’t got his act together for whatever reason and comes in in a panic and flails around in search of the perfect present.

If that sounds like you, the key is to look calm, no matter how stressed you are on the inside or else you’ll be taken for a mug and may even end up buying one. The trick to good gift buying – leaving aside the whole buy early and calmly notion, which is beyond many of us – is to channel the wisdom of Santa and make a list. Not a list of gifts mind, but a list of gift-getters.

Buy the premium present first and always go shopping with an open mind, that way you will come across present options that may never have occurred to you. Open mind? That sounds suspiciously like blank mind, and isn’t that why most Last Minute Men have got into trouble in the first place?

MONEY NO OBJECT

Who knew money smelled so good. The Marvel Room in Dublin’s Brown Thomas may not be big but you’ll need big bucks if you’re planning to pick up your last-minute presents here. If you have more money than sense or just want to marvel at how the tiny percentage of the world who can afford to drop more than €30,000 on a watch live, you should call in. We took a stroll around the shop last week and some of the prices left us breathless.

The fist thing that caught our eye was a ridiculously bling Swarovski-encrusted telephone handset. We thought the price tag of €599 was fairly hefty but, as we continued to browse, it dawned on us that the handset was one of the cheaper products for sale.

Playboy has only been legally on sale in this country for 15 years but its history goes back a lot further than that and many of the world’s finest writers have graced its pages over the last 50 years, although the numbers who ever bought it for the writing were, let’s face it, probably small. The magazine has moved from the top shelf to a glass one in BTs. The high-end department store is describing its “Playboy Collector’s Kit” as the “boy’s choice” this Christmas. It is not Pricewatch’s choice and the six-volume, hardback collection of images, articles “and stunning centrefolds” from the Hefner archives has the ridiculous price of just over €1,000.

Slightly pricier but a whole lot cooler is the Bang Olufsen BroSound iPlayer which costs €1,100. But even at that price, it is among the cheaper gifts on offer. Not far away were Tateossian cufflinks which would have set us back €4,000. Even the cufflinks were left in the ha’penny place by the jewel in the Marvel Room’s crown – an ugly clunky watch that has a price tag of €33,900. And how could a watch be worth so much money? It couldn’t, we reckon, although what we do know is that it is made with rose gold and “an exotic alligator skin strap”, only 288 of them were ever made and only one ended up in Ireland. When we asked about it we were told that a collector was interested in buying this “ultimate in luxury gifting”. As a present for themselves. Good luck to them.

The watch is the dearest item in the Marvel Room, but the Chanel Alligator Skin bag at €25,000 runs it very close. Apparently this bag was Coco Chanel’s personal fave and has been washed in the tears of baby seals. A diamond encrusted Dior watch with a ceramic strap that will never scratch will set you back €22,000 while a Louis Vuitton clutch bag is €5,500. And it’s tiny. By comparison the 500ml tub of Crème de la Mer moisturising cream costs €1,300. Yes, €1,300 for half a litre of moisturising cream. The price is so inflated because it comes with a sterling silver pallet for the application of the cream and a box with a key which can double as a jewellery box when you’re done.

The Marvel Room has a lot of stuff which people might find fun. Not much is cheap but it is at least vaguely affordable. There are funky items from YSL, Tom Ford, Victoria Beckham and novelty gifts and stocking fillers including paper doll books, Christmas headbands, USB keys and Lanvin notebooks.

ON THE CHEAP

The other end of the scale to the Marvel Room is the recently opened Euro Saver shop on St Stephen’s Green and when Pricewatch went in search of present inspiration last week it was heaving with people filling their baskets with all manner of Christmas tat, including Santa hats, cheap-as-chips decorations and presents for people they obviously hate.

Amongst our favourite worst presents was the Ecstasy box set. No, it’s not a bag of yokes, as the kids call the raver’s drug of choice, but a toiletry set. This little box of Ecstasy is a long, long way from the cream of the sea and is made up of 100ml of shower gel and 100ml of eau de toilet. At just €1.50 is smells pretty bad and looks pretty bad too. If €1.50 is too much for you there is the Homer Simpson in his Y-fronts which is a snip at €1.

For someone of an artistic bent there is an artist’s palette and seven brushes for €2 – we were not able to asses the quality of the brush heads but, based on the price, we’re guessing not brilliant. There was a wooden picture frame the same price and a cupcake ceramic money box – who wouldn’t love that? – which cost €2 too.

For the musical child of a sibling you hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns, perhaps, can we suggest the plastic recorder. It will set you back €2 and sounds screechy and hideous. Another €2 will get you the tiny little disco ball. Christmas is not Christmas without crackers and chocolate liqueurs, and both can also be found here at a cost of €1.50 each, although the liqueurs tasted pretty revolting and the crackers were the worst we have ever seen.

Over on Moore Street, the hawkers were doing a brisk trade in dreadful presents. There was a Slanket knock-off – a blanket with sleeves, if you must know – for €10. A weird footwarmer that looked a lot like a giant slipper. There was Nivea gift sets for the man in your life (at least until he gets the present) which were selling for €10. A framed print of Justin Beiber can be yours for the same price and the worst games console we have seen since the 1980s was also selling for, yes, you guessed it, €10.

LAST-MINUTE EATS

While most people pre-order their turkey and ham well in advance, there is no need to panic if you’ve not got round to it and there is no need to race down to your local massive retailer and buy whatever frozen yoke you can lay your hands on either.

Pat Whelan owns James Whelan Butchers in Clonmel and more recently of the Avoca store in Monkstown, south Dublin. “It is a ritual to order in advance and around 80 per cent of our Christmas trade is pre-ordered, but we also have to be flexible because things can change right up to the last minute.”

He uses last year as an example when the plans of many people fell victim to the snow. “Butchers can react more quickly to these changing circumstances than the big retailers. We are like speedboats to their tankers and we proved that last year by being in a position to help people out who found they had to change their plans very late on.”

In addition to his two butcher shops, Whelan also runs a very successful online business and was delivering meat all over the country at the height of the snow last year. With impressive understatement, he describes the week before Christmas last year as “challenging”. He coped by using couriers and even taxis to get birds to the ovens where they belonged. “There is more to it than just the turkey and ham. It is about traditions and building relationships and I think many people will remember what we did last year.”

He says business has been good in the run-up to Christmas and despite the gloom people will be prepared to buy the centrepiece of their Christmas meal from local butchers even if they cost a little more. “In recent times many people have turned to Aldi and Lidl but they have started to realise that there is a difference between price and value. I have thousands of customers all over the country and that is a ‘V’ sign to the big players and a clear statement that often what they are doing is not good enough.”

Aldi will still be busy this year and has all manner of festive fare, including condiments, chocolates and cheeses, many of which have been sourced from artisan producers in Ireland. This week it will have a range of fresh turkeys available, including a free range whole bird which will be selling for €29.99 for 4kg. It also has non-free range turkeys for €19.99 for 5kg and turkey crown for €19.99 for 1.8kg. Its Irish half bone-in gammon will cost €2.99 per kg, and the average weight is 4kg.

For its part Lidl will also be selling fresh Irish turkeys this week and also has an impressive array of party foods. It is selling a (frozen) three bird (turkey, chicken and duck) roast for €12.99. Frozen turkey crowns cost €9.99 and, if you’re really stuck, it has a frozen turkey TV dinner with, em, all the trimmings for €1.99.

If you are really pressed for time, however, and have a few bob left after buying all your presents, the best quality in almost everything that you would want to have on your Christmas dinner table plate – from roasted vegetables, to bronze turkeys, to seafoods, soups and chestnut-laced brussel sprouts – is still selling like crazy in your local MS. It is kind of cheating to buy your spuds and vegetables pre-prepared, though, isn’t it?