Web Guide to Last-Minute Shopping
Shopping sites promote guaranteed deliveries, procrastinator's sections for harried Web shoppers.Joel Strauch, special to PCWorld.com
With Thanksgiving falling on the earliest day possible this past November, excuses for not finding time to pick up holiday presents may fall on deaf ears this year.
But for some (maybe most) of us, more time to shop means more time to procrastinate. You may want to avoid picking up presents at the local 7-11 this time around (you know little Jimmy didn't appreciate the car freshener and the three-pack of burritos last year). Fortunately, a selection of Web sites offer guaranteed holiday delivery, even this week.
Naturally, the longer you wait, the more the shipping costs increase for timely delivery. But you don't need anyone razzing you for putting off the shopping, right?
Navigating Retail Rivers
Like most e-tailers, Amazon.com offers a variety of tools to make sure your gifts arrive on time. Its timetable spells out which shipping services you'll need to use on various dates.
For example, take Amazon's Holiday Guaranteed Shipping. Items that have a holly symbol (which details the shipping requirements) displayed on their page can help you make deadline. Through December 21 everywhere, and until noon Pacific Time on December 22, these gifts can still be sent to arrive by Christmas Eve.
"If you've absolutely screwed up and missed the other deadlines, we can still get it there for you [with Holiday Guaranteed Shipping]," says Ling Hong, an Amazon spokesperson. The cost will vary according to the size and number of items, she says.
Other sites such as Gifts.com feature last-minute shopping sections. If you purchase anything from this section of Gifts.com by noon Eastern Time on December 21 and ship it by next-day delivery, the company promises to deliver it before Christmas.
Catering to the Tardy
The aptly-named Procrastinators.com's last-minute shopping page contains a collection of Web site banners and links to e-tailers with two-day shipping specials.
Just check your favorite shopping sites and dig around for their shipping details. With Christmas Eve on a Monday this year, you can often cut the final deadline a little closer.
Even the big retail chains are offering last-minute services. East Coast-based Macy's will let you order until 1 p.m. Eastern Time on December 21 and get the package before Christmas. Nordstrom, based on the West Coast, is accepting last-minute orders until 10 a.m. Pacific Time on December 23 for next-day delivery (at an additional charge). Wal-Mart's cutoff for orders with guaranteed Christmas Eve delivery is 5 p.m. Eastern Time on December 20.
Advice Available
If you have no idea how to even come up with last-minute gift ideas, many search engines have organized lists of last-minute shopping sites. Excite's last-minute list includes a variety of e-tailers to get you started, ranging from Banana Republic to Tower Records.
America Online's Shop@AOL, accessible even to non-subscribers to the online service, offers gift ideas and shopping options. You can search for gift ideas by a variety of factors, including type and price.
Shop@AOL provides links to a variety of bricks-and-clicks retailers (which spell out their own last-minute delivery options). You'll also find a directory of local stores if you'd prefer to brave the physical crowds instead of virtual ones.
Yahoo's own shopping service organizes holiday shopping into demographic categories and then by cost. You pick whom to shop for, and then designate how much to spend. The site has also launched its own Last Minute Shopping area accessible from the Yahoo home page or from the What's Hot links on the Yahoo Shopping Page.
All of the merchants Yahoo features on the Last Minute Shopping area clearly display deadlines for getting your gifts to their destination by December 24. Once a deadline date has passed, that merchant will be removed from the Last Minute section to eliminate any confusion.
Shipping Tips
Wherever you shop online, make sure you will be able to track your packages via the e-tailer's own shipping service or one of the commercial services. FedEx, UPS, Airborne, and DHL all have their own Web pages with tracking options. Through those sites, you can keep tabs on your presents and intervene if it looks like they're just sitting at a shipping hub.
And if things get desperate and you miss even these last-minute deadlines, you can always pull up at the 7-11 site and find the store most convenient to you. Maybe little Jimmy could use a new can of WD-40.