the cost of gift receipts

So we received a bunch of crappy gifts for Xmas this year, and seeing as our relatives feel the need to purchase items from stores that aren't located anywhere near our home town, we usually end up taking a road-trip every January to return or exchange all of the reject gifts of Xmas past.

This year, we found ourselves driving almost an hour to visit stores like Target, Toys R Us, and Kohl's. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that the gifts we were returning weren't even worth the cost of gas to get us there and back. Apparently, our relatives were all shopping the clearance racks, which is fine and dandy, but I wish they would have told us that the toy they bought my son was worth less than $2 at Kohl's before we ventured out there to return it. I would have donated it or eBay'd it instead.

As we are growing older, I just can't stand the whole gift-giving tradition of Christmas. I can understand getting gifts for the children, as they are fun to watch when they open them, but for adults - please.

So once again, we will have to try and reinforce with our relatives to please save their cash and only buy gifts for the kids next year, and that due to the expensive return/exchange trips, they are actually costing us money. Of course, they always like to chime in that they "included the gift receipt just in case!" Gee, thanks, but we've got enough paperwork to deal with during the holidays. Now I've got to worry about yet another store receipt during the great gift unwrapping frenzy that is likely to rub blank before I can get to the store.

I wish I could convince them to start shopping online like the rest of the modern world. After all, if they send me an online gift certificate, then I can not only pick out my own gift online (thereby saving gas and making sure that it is something that I might actually wear), but I can grab some nifty Kohls coupon codes to make that gift certificate value stretch a little farther.