Web Sites to Hit for Those Last-Minute Gifts

Check out sites with delivery guarantees or myriad gift certificates to push your holiday shopping even closer to deadline.

Lincoln Spector, special to PCWorld.com

Christmas is fast approaching, and the first night of Hanukkah is four days before that. Can you possibly finish your holiday shopping in time? The stores are overcrowded, the mall parking lots are full, and the weather is lousy. You could try buying gifts over the Web, but can you trust online retailers to deliver on time this close to the holidays? Maybe you can.

Internet retailers are doing everything they can to get your last-minute holiday business. They're giving you timetables to let you know when you must place an order for it to arrive on time, and some are even guaranteeing the accuracy of those tables. They're offering tools to help you select the right gift. And they're delivering gift certificates at the speed of e-mail.

Virtually every online retailer has posted holiday deadlines--order by such and such a date and the package will arrive by Christmas. But the longer you wait, the more on-time delivery will cost. On many sites, it's already too late to expect timely delivery if you opt for their cheapest shipping method.

For instance, Amazon.com has an extensive timetable explaining what you can get away with on what day. December 14 was the "last day to order items that say 'Usually ships in 24 hours' using Standard Shipping," but you have until the 19th if you use 2nd Day Air.

Some Deliveries Guaranteed

Some Internet retailers, such as Nordstrom, actually guarantee that if you make your deadline, they'll make theirs. But can anyone be absolutely positive that anything will arrive on time? Even the best mail-order company makes mistakes, as do FedEx and UPS. Nevertheless, Nordstrom spokesperson Shasha Richardson sounds confident.

"We've been doing this for seven years. Last year we didn't disappoint any of our customers," she says. Should a holiday package arrive late, Nordstrom promises to make amends. "We'd let the customer tell us what they'd like us to do," Richardson says.

Procrastinators may want to pick the store with the latest deadline and best guarantee. You can do this on Yahoo's Last Minute Shopping page, which highlights 12 stores (presumably those that paid Yahoo for the privilege), with deadline and guarantee information for each. There's also a longer list of stores that didn't pay enough for major onscreen real estate. Each store reference links to the store's holiday deadline policy.

Of course, real procrastinators don't need a deadline; they need a cool way to apologize. For those, Coach has a free service called Coach E-Gift that you can order with a purchase. Coach will send an e-mail to your loved one, offering a Web link to a personalized message and a photo of the forthcoming gift. Basically, this is a 21st century way of saying "Sorry, but my gift will be late."

Picking the Right Gift

Okay, you know when to order the gift, but you still don't know what to buy. Many retail sites now have special pages to help you pick the right gift. The trouble is, these tools don't know your loved ones half as well as you do.

Express.com's 60 Second Shopper is a good example. There's a pull-down list to pick the type of person you're buying for (Mother, Father, Boyfriend, Office Buddy, and so on) and check boxes for the types of products you have in mind (DVDs, CDs, Cool Stuff). I used this simple interface to find the right CD for my girlfriend, and got a selection of music from U2, the Wallflowers, Madonna, and others. But Express.com had no way of knowing that my girlfriend is a professional classical musician and an Ibrahim Ferrer fan.

E-mail gift certificates, of course, are the perfect solution to both problems. You don't have to worry about buying the right gift, or that it will arrive in time. And just about every online retailer offers these. What you lose with an e-mail gift certificate is the ability to hand the gift to someone and watch them open it. Of course, you can always e-mail the certificate to yourself, print it, and put it in an envelope.

If you go the certificate route, check out GiftCertificates.com. On this one site you can buy gift certificates for more than 500 retailers. Some are online, some are brick and mortar. You can pick a category like Apparel & Accessories or Dining, get a list of retailers that have signed up with GiftCertificates.com, read details, and make a choice.

Or if you can't make a choice, you can buy a SuperCertificate. Basically, this is a GiftCertificates.com gift certificate, which your loved one can use to buy other gift certificates. At this point, you might as well just send money.

With fast delivery and gift certificates, there's really no excuse for late gifts. Well, almost none. Long ago I committed myself to buying my son a PlayStation 2 for Hanukkah. There's no way that will arrive on time.

(See also "PCWorld.com Editors' Guide to Shopping Sites" and PCWorld.com's ongoing coverage of shopping online.