Choose the morning it lands.
Every gift here can be held and released on a date you name, up to a year out. Which sounds like a small feature and is in fact the thing that turns a panic purchase in October into a present that arrives on a birthday.
What can be timed, and how precisely.
| Gift | How precisely | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A digital card | To the morning | Sent at 08:00 UK time on the date you choose |
| A printed card | To the day, roughly | Posted second class two working days before. The Royal Mail is the variable |
| A hamper | To the day | Dispatched so that a tracked courier delivers on the date |
| A box subscription | To the month | It starts on the 3rd of whichever month you name |
| A patch | To the morning | The card is timed; the field does what it likes |
| A membership | To the morning | Access opens at 08:00 on the day |
| A cask | To the morning | The card, at least. The cask has been sitting there since July |
The dates that actually matter in a year.
The patch grid reopens. A patch bought now is a present that runs to next August.
The last date for two hundred corporate hampers before Christmas.
The last date for fifty to two hundred.
The last date for ten to fifty.
The last date for anything chilled, anywhere in the UK.
The last date for everything else. After this it is a gift card.
A digital gift card still works. It has always still worked.
The quietest month at the shop, and the best time to give somebody a box.
How the holding works.
You pay when you order
In a live build. The money moves now and the gift moves later.
Nothing is sent until the date
No confirmation to them, no accidental early email, and nothing in a spam folder in October.
You can change the date
Up to twenty-four hours before, as often as you like.
You get a reminder
Two days before it goes, so that a present bought in June is not a surprise to you as well.
And a confirmation when it lands
Which is the message people actually wait for.
Why we do not send it early to be safe.
The tempting thing, on a gift scheduled for a birthday, is to release it a day early so that nothing can possibly be late. Several retailers do exactly that.
It is the wrong call. A present that arrives on the wrong day is not early, it is spoiled — the point of naming a date is the date. So a scheduled digital gift goes at eight in the morning on the day named, and a physical one is dispatched so that the courier’s stated window falls on it.
Where a courier fails, which happens, we tell you rather than them, so that you can decide whether to say anything. That is the only part of this where the buyer gets the bad news first, and it is deliberate.
Timing, questioned.
A year. Somebody has scheduled a card for a twenty-first birthday four years out and we had to tell them no, which was a genuinely difficult email to write.
British. All of it, everywhere, including for a buyer in Melbourne choosing a date for somebody in Leeds.
The date, yes, up to a day before. The gift itself, within fourteen days as normal.
We tell you, not them, so that you get to decide what to say. It is the one case where the buyer hears first.
The December version of all this.
Five dates, and what still works after each one.
Elsewhere on the estate.
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