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Comment by busyant | Hacker News Reader

About 5 years ago, one of my sons wanted a drone for xmas.

In mid-November, Walmart.com warned me to "Order soon to guarantee that you'll get <x> for Christmas."

So, I did the "responsible" thing and ordered the drone before Thanksgiving and it arrived around Nov 25.

Wrap it up. Son opens it on Christmas, aaaaand it's broken out of the box. One of the rotors was bent and wouldn't rotate.

Brought it to Walmart probably on the 27th of December and Walmart tells me, "This was sold by one of our 3rd party vendors. You have to take it up with them."

3rd party vendor tells me to pound sand because there's a 30 day return policy. Remember how I was responsible and got the drone a month ahead of time?

In retrospect, I should have disputed the charge, but it didn't occur to me at the time.

Still makes me angry.

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One thing I have never understood is why parents do not inspect, open, etc the products before wrapping them?

I am mean this is a decades old problem from not having the correct batteries, to missing parts, etc etc. Alot of Christmas day disappointments could be avoided by just inspecting the toys before wrapping them.....

Yeah, sure, maybe one day I'll have time during the holidays not allocated to "family" and "unplugging from the stress of dealing with family" and can do things like "inspect everything I'm about to give away as a gift"...

I pretty clearly did not say inspect everything... I limited clearly to children toys, and it could even be limited to the "main" present like this clearly was.

Every kid has the "one thing" they really want that year, I always see posts by parents that they "one thing" was missing a part, or did not have batteries, or like this case was damaged.

Not a parent, but for me when gift giving and receiving - there is a lot of joy in opening the completely 100% unopened thing.

And opening many children toys is usually pretty difficult without scissors and or destroying the packaging. The amount of time consuming precision tape peeling without removing the graphic layer of cardboard may be a little untenable around Christmas.

I can't tell you precisely what I was thinking 5 years ago, but your explanation (joy of opening something that clearly has not been opened) is probably closest to my motivations.

Well as a child I dont think I would have even noticed if the box was opened, or if it even came in a box, if my Sega Genesis or my new Bike, or what ever was completely out of the box I would not have cared (and pretty sure I got more than a few presents completely pre-assembled), hell if the Genesis already hooked up to the TV ready to play I probably would have preferred that...

Of course now as an adult I hate gifts, I buy what I need/want when I need/want it. I do not want other people to spend money on me at all.. Most holidays have become soo commercialized that the consumerism of it all puts me off

Re-learning to love gifts, particularly the giving aspect has brought a lot of joy to my life recently. But I am not talking about buying someone something at Walmart, something they can just buy themselves.

The gifts tend to skew more towards art, fabrics, jewelry, house items. Things that are uniquely found in a particular place, not exactly expensive but mostly hard to acquire / stumble upon.

But yes I agree, the commercialized consumerism is quite off putting. I am grateful for it though, as I am now coming full circle and rediscovering the joy from a very human and primordial action.

> Of course now as an adult I hate gifts

I dislike a lot of gift giving, but I do not dislike gifts. Most people who know me well knows I really don't care for pointless tchotchkes, but I do value actually useful gifts. When I use those gifts, I remember the person who gave it to me and get a reminder of their friendship or love. A perfect example is a pocket knife I usually have on me which my wife gave me as a gift; I always think about her every time I use it.

There's a stupid negative stigma around regifting and getting used things, so there's desirability in the gift being presented being brand new, never taken out of the box. Which means you spend Xmas day waiting for your Xbox to download the latest firmware instead and hoping Xbox live doesn't go down instead of being able to play it.

> There's a stupid negative stigma around regifting

Which, we should stress, is toxic nonsensical shit.

Consumerist crap which promotes an always-buying culture of throwing away things instead of reduce+reuse.

Because the quality control rot is not something that most people are prepared to accept. Most people are unwilling to accept that things have gotten worse.

Some stores will allow anything purchased during the holiday season to be returned up to a certain point in January

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