Ok, Here's the situation. You have 10 minutes to find a gift basket for a friend, who's birthday you forgot, AND it's tomorrow!! You go to one of the search engines, and type in "gift baskets". Up pops a seemingly endless list of gift basket companies. Their baskets look nice so you spend another 15 minutes (when you only had 10 to begin with!) looking through their site for just the right basket. You find it, call to order, and you're told that you'll have to have it overnighted. So you spend another $20.00-$30.00 to have a $50.00 gift basket shipped overnight to your friend in Florida. What you most likely don't know is that the basket is shipping from California.

Many companies claim to have "free shipping". We all know that nothing is free. If a company is offering "free shipping", rest assured it's being built-in to the price of the basket. At that point, the quality and quantity needs to be scrutinized very closely. Are you really getting what you paid for? Or are you really paying for the shipping, and fewer or lower quality gourmet foods/gifts? Saving money is one thing, but sending a low quality gift when you paid for a brand name, high quality gift, should be unacceptable to you. It is to me.

Another situation is, companies on the internet would like you to believe that they are like the "FTD" of the flower world, and a couple claim to be. The problem with this is, the people they refer the order to do not have the same merchandise as what you saw on the original site. They are simply affiliates, who try to come "close" to what you ordered. Not exact. They don't disclose this to you, unless you ask. Some of them even have a disclaimer on their websites. It's that text at the bottom of the page that's typed in 1 pt. and 2 shades lighter than the background of the page. It's hard to find, but it's there.

So, what to do? The best thing to do is call a local. You can even have the basket customized if needed. A local company in the city you need delivery to, will bend over backwards to please you. They do so because they really want you as a repeat customer, and have your reputation, and theirs on the line. Big companies don't care. If there's a complaint, they'll just send out another cheap basket.

There are literally thousands of small gift basket companies across the US, and Canada who know how frustrating it can be to find a great gift. This is their life, not just a business. It's their passion.

What most online shoppers don't know is, what to type into a search engine to find them. Typing in just "Gift Baskets" will only get you a list of the most visible companies, not necessarily the best option for you. So here are a few suggestions;

Gift Baskets--city needed (ex. gift baskets Atlanta)
City--gift baskets (ex. Atlanta gift baskets)
City--state-gift baskets (Atlanta GA/Georgia gift baskets)

That should pull up local companies, but read the site descriptions carefully. Some of the larger companies have multiple pages of every state, as if they were a local.

Most local companies will have the city/state name in the title of the page, and further delivery information on their home pages. Taking 2 minutes to read their home page will save you more time in the long run. Most locals have a wide hand delivery area, so they should be able to accommodate most request.

So the answer is simple really. Call a local company. They'll take much more pride in your gift, it won't show up shrink-wrapped, in a cardboard box, and the recipient won't have a ton of packaging to put out for recycling.

Copyright © 2007 CPS