Gift List Services - a comparison of features
When deciding on which Gift List company to use, there are some important factors we feel you should take into consideration.
1) Is the gift list service a money contribution type or an actual purchase type?
What’s the difference? Well, the traditional department stores like John Lewis and Debenhams are the “actual purchase” type. Another words, when you add an item to your list and one of your guests buys that item, that item has indeed been physically bought and neither you nor your guest can change your mind about it. With the specialist gift list services like The Bottom Drawer, the list is a “money contribution” type which means your guests make a contribution towards your selected gifts but the gifts aren’t actually bought until after your list closes. This gives you the flexibility to change your mind.
This is worth bearing in mind because if you have your list at a department store you may well end up with odd dinner plates or glasses from a larger set which you then either stick away unused in a cupboard because you don’t have the full set, or you end up having to pay out yourself to complete the set. If you use The Bottom Drawer for those items you can decide when your list closes whether to buy the complete set or use the money received to buy alternative items you can afford instead.
2) Am I limited to the items that store sells?
With the traditional lists at department stores like John Lewis or smaller specialist stores, yes you are limited to just the items they sell. You might think this isn’t a problem as they offer so many items after all. But, remember it also means you are limited to the price they charge for those items – which could be a very expensive mistake to make.
At The Bottom Drawer you are able to add any item, from any store to your list. To show how much difference this could make, here’s an example. Say you really wanted your guests to contribute towards a new LCD TV. At one of the large department stores you would have a reasonable choice though at one of the specialist stores we searched if you wanted one over 20” you would have a choice of just 1, the Panasonic TX23LXD60. At The Bottom Drawer you could choose from every TV available on the market today! But let's stick with the Panasonic to give a fair comparison. At the small specialist store the price was £795 for this TV, if you had your list at John Lewis and selected this TV you would have had to pay £745. However, if you held your list at The Bottom Drawer you could choose from the best price available, which a Kelkoo search showed to be £494! So going with John Lewis could mean you pay well over the odds for your gifts! (prices and details correct at 15 Feb 2007).
3) What if I want gifts from more than one store?
Traditionally, you may want some lower priced gifts from say Argos to go with some more exclusive gifts from say John Lewis. In the past you would need to set-up two separate gift lists at two separate stores and send out two lots of invitations. But with The Bottom Drawer you can have all your gift items on one list (and yes you can even add items from John Lewis, Next, Argos and the other traditional department stores!)
4) Ah yes, but you’re not the only company that can provide this flexibility are you?
You’re quite right, in the past few months there have been quite a few internet companies set-up which mimmick the flexible service we offer. And a lot of them claim to be free to use. But remember the old saying “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”? Well it very definitely applies in these cases! Whilst they are often free for you to use as the couple setting up the list (though they may charge for extras like invitation insert cards etc), they make their money by adding some fairly large fees to the payments your guests make to you. Now because of the way we operate, we also have to add on transaction charges levied on us by the credit card companies when a guest uses a credit card. But we keep this to an absolute minimum at just 2.75%. We also make this very clear to your guests and give them the options of paying by cheque or debit card which totally avoids these charges (or you the couple can opt to pay any credit card charges instead of your guests).
We have seen other internet sites add up to 9% (or more!) extra onto any gifts your guests make, whether by credit or debit card, and most don’t offer a cheque facility either. This can make a big difference. At The Bottom Drawer, the average amount raised on a gift list is nearly £2,000. If you opted to use your list to buy gifts direct from us or our affiliated or partner companies, there would be no charge to you to use our service. If you wanted to buy items from companies we don’t feature we would charge a small administration fee. As your guests could opt to pay by cheque or debit card there are potentially no other charges incurred by you or your guests when you use The Bottom Drawer. But at one of these other flexible gift list sites, charging 9% and offering no cheque payment facility, you or your guests could end up paying an extra £180 or more in charges! And chances are your guests won’t be too happy about these charges either so end up spending less on you! So please always check the small print before thinking of using one of these other services.
At The Bottom Drawer you benefit from all the best features from other gift list services but needn't worry about the small print!
5) I want something totally different!
Well that’s where The Bottom Drawer really comes into its own! The reason we can offer such an incredibly flexible, low cost service that knocks the competition out of the water is because we were originally set-up, and still do an awful lot of, alternative gift lists such as a garden makeover, or luxurious new fitted bathroom. We put you in touch with recommended companies local to you who can provide these services. Your quote from them forms the basis of your gift list – so you could have gifts of each paving slab in a new patio, or each new deck board, or each square metre of turf for a new lawn, or each hours labour to lay it! You can also add individual pictures for each gift to really make them stand out. If you fancy something like this, just let us know, but the great news is that the development that went into making this site work for these alternative gifts we can use just as easily whether you want a gift list containing garden items or items from John Lewis! And because we already have the technology in place to run the service, we can do it at much lower costs than our competitors.
6) What about the safety of our/our guests money?
The Bottom Drawer is an established company that has been providing gift list services for many years. That gives us a considerable advantage over many of the recent start-up companies that may or may not survive their first few months of trading - always the trickiest period!
Whilst we are predominantly an online company, we do pop up into the real world every now and again just to put some faces behind the service! Our most recent outing was at the RHS Royal Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in July 2007 where we created a showgarden to promote our garden makeover gift list service. And we even won a prestigious Silver Flora medal for our efforts!
The vast majority of guests contribute towards gift lists using a credit or visa debit card. When one of these is used there is considerable protection offered by the card companies which means if there was a problem your guests should be able to get a full refund from their card company.
All credit and debit card transactions are processed online using 128bit technology by Protx, a card processing company approved by all the major banks.
The Bottom Drawer is a Limited Company in English law. This means we have to follow strict reporting requirements at Companies House every year and our records are publicly available. Small internet companies (and even some larger ones) which haven’t undergone this process may not be so forthcoming with information about the Registered Office address or details of its Directors making it harder for you if something does go wrong.
For those couples using our service to collect cash contributions, we do not ask for your bank details in advance, only when your funds are ready to be transferred. They are then filed on a separate system to the main site so in a worst case scenario and our systems were hacked into, any confidential data remains separate.
Finally, consider how secure your information is – what if someone did hack into a site, pretended to be you by obtaining your details, and asked for your gift list funds to be transferred to THEIR bank account! The first and only gift list company in the UK to be certified by the worlds leading compliance company (Hackersafe) is The Bottom Drawer. Our site and systems are tested daily to make sure they are secure against all known hacker attacks. Hackersafe are even used by Microsoft to test the integrity of their e-commerce sites.
We hope that helps but if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.