A great busy-traveler shipping option for Christmas

by Charlie Leocha on December 15, 2009

online_holiday_shopping
I know this reads like an ad for JCPenny’s. I wish I was making money from this, but it is a great solution for many of us who are faced with getting gifts to friends and family during the holidays. I wish other companies would follow JCPenny’s lead of making the airlines’ baggage fees and TSA restrictions a sales pitch.

This was a clever and useful press release for frequent and last-minute travelers with a JCPenny’s nearby their Christmas destination. It makes so much sense, it’s convenient and saves shipping costs too.

Since airport travel restrictions make it difficult to travel with presents and airlines are now charging Grinch-like fees for extra bags stuffed with presents, here is a solution. JCPenney, with more than 1,100 stores nationwide, has a free service that makes long distance gift giving easy.

JCPenney’s ship-to-store option allows customers to avoid airlines’ checked-bag fees and wrapped gifts restrictions. Instead of packing a checked bag full of unwrapped gifts, customers can opt to purchase gifts ahead of time on www.jcp.com and have them shipped to any of JCPenney’s catalog desks across the nation.

Pick up your gifts at your destination and wrap them yourself, or for as little as $5 a package, jcp.com customers can opt to have their gifts wrapped.

Let’s take this a step farther. With a family that lives near a JCPenny’s store, you can order gifts here and just have your family members pick up their already-wrapped gifts at their nearby store and put them under the family tree for Christmas.

Let us know if you have any other clever ways to get your gift buying done and have the gifts arrive wrapped and ready to go under the tree.

Hope you have a merry Christmas shopping season.

Ahh, maybe if you thought ahead enough, buying the gifts, then wrapping them yourself and shipping them by UPS or FedEx Ground would make sense too.

I just discovered a similar program at Wal-mart (but I don’t know about the gift wrapping). Do you know of others who can help get Christmas gifts off and away for busy travelers?

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Tagged as: christmas gifts, jcpenny's

  • Tim

    I bet most any bricks-and-mortar store that has an online presence will do this. For instance, I have ordered stuff from rei.com and picked it up at my local REI store. I believe Best Buy does the same thing–just check their website before ordering.

    Whether the store offers wrapping is another issue–I have not needed this, but I would suggest either bringing gift bags to put the presents in, or ask the person who are visiting if you can borrow a spare room to privately wrap the gifts–you could buy wrapping paper and tape on the way to their house, then borrow a pair of scissors.

  • Danielle

    I’ve always used Amazon.com to do this when we travel to my family’s home for the holidays. I pick out the entire family’s gifts, have it shipped in one super-saver shipping (i.e., free) package. There are also no taxes. I can specify which gift is for whom and include a free message or pay a little extra per pkg for gift wrap ($4-5?). It’s worked out quite well for us. We’ve done this the past few years….

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