When you’ve been in the gifting business for nearly 20 years, you’re bound to see a few requests for weird gifts. And hey! At Gift Baskets Overseas, we think weird can be wonderful, so we don’t judge. At this point, we’ve had requests for just about everything, from pets to cooked dinners, even some things we just dare not mention in front of polite company.
We can’t always make it happen, but it sure is fun when we can. If you want to hear more about some of the things we have been able to pull off in the past, check out this video from 2021!
And if you want to hear some new stories about weird gifts – we’ve got you covered too!
Weird Gifts: Requests
You’ve heard about the unique and weird gifts we’ve been able to deliver, but what about the ones we can’t make happen? Well, it may surprise you that many of those have to do with meat. Honestly, we can’t blame our clients – a hearty basket filled with quality cuts of meat seems like a great way to spoil someone.
One customer was so sure of our awesome catalog they called in to order a basket of ribeye, ham, and sake. While this combination sounds amazing, this just isn’t a gift we offer. For starters, those items need to ship at very different temperatures, and second raw meat just isn’t practical in the gifting world.
Of course, this isn’t the only odd request we get – we still get the occasional phone call asking for pets. We get it – they’re adorable gifts – but we just haven’t quite figured out how to make them sit pretty in gift baskets.
We love making custom gift requests come true – so if you have a request, let us know! Just be sure to understand that even we have our limits, and putting together a custom gift takes extra time.
Weird Gifts: Notes
When it comes to weird gifts – you may not think about the notes that are left. However, we encourage you to do so! For privacy reasons, we can’t show you the full notes of our clients, but we can talk a bit about the beautiful creativity we’ve seen in some of them.
Take, for instance, a law firm with a sense of humor. In their holiday gifts they decided to sign out with a Christmas tune with a spin to let you know exactly who was sending it:
Fa law law law law, law law law law…..
They may not have guaranteed a happy holiday to their clients, but this card got rave reviews from our customer service team.
Another crafty customer decided to surprise a special someone with a gift basket… from their cat! This adorable and generous person even went so far as to throw in more than a few “meows” – for authenticity.
. . . .and meow meow meow meow. . . .
The list goes on from here – stylish emojis – clever wordplay – even scavenger hunt clues! Weird gifts can include weirder and wilder gift cards, and honestly, we think some of these outshone the gifts themselves. After all, a gift is all about the thought behind it!
Weird Gifts: Delivery Issues
The world of weird gifts wouldn’t be complete without us discussing delivery issues. These happen from time to time, from incomplete addresses to recipients suddenly taking a vacation. There are several everyday issues we’re prepared to handle.
However – from time to time, we run into less everyday issues. Our most extreme issue to date – nearly having the cops called on us! Yes, you read that right.
You see – to ensure that gifts arrive safe and sound, we sometimes need to call recipients ahead of time. Mostly this is to ensure they’ll be home to receive particularly fragile gifts, such as flowers, when delivered. These phone calls can sometimes be tricky; we’re used to verifying that we aren’t telemarketers and that we are, in fact, just a gift company. What we weren’t prepared for was one recipient who wanted to avoid phone calls so much that they threatened to involve the police!
Never fear – our expert team was able to get the gift basket delivered with no arrests.
Weird Fixes for Weird Mistakes
We encourage our team to work independently to come up with creative solutions to delight our customers. In fact, we pride ourselves on empowering and motivating our customer service team to give the best customer service possible. However, we’re here to talk about weird gifts, and that wouldn’t be complete without talking about some of the weird gift fixes that get tossed around the idea board.
If you’ve ever worked in customer service, you know what we’re talking about. You get exhausted or just plain confused by what has managed to happen; your first few ideas are just a joke.
Take, for instance, our tale of Dr. Pepper and identity confusion.
You see – we work internationally, and while our team speaks many different languages, we don’t speak them all. So sometimes, things get lost in translation.
We had a customer request to include 4 cans of Dr. Pepper in a gift basket. Simple, right? Well – as you can see in this picture, that isn’t quite what they got. Instead, 4 jars of pepper were nestled into the gift basket.
As far as weird gifts go – this one was our fault, and while yes, we did get to the bottom of what happened and fix this gift, that wasn’t before one team member thought up the idea of dressing up these jars in little lab coats – ya know, to make them true Dr. Peppers!
We think you can agree they look dashing! <— See what we did there!
What will 2023 bring us? More pet requests? Some new and wonderful weird gifts? Who knows! But our customer service team sits ready and waiting to help you 24/7, yes, even on the holidays.
You’ve heard some more stories about weird gifts – now what?
- – Check out this past blog to hear about the Top 3 Most Unusual Gift Orders We Delivered.
- – Browse through our catalog of gifts to see what we can actually send.
- – Subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on gifting trends!