I was looking to send a valentines day gift to a city in US. I had 2 problems:

Decide what to gift (gift ideas)

Ensure that it reaches the desired address on Valentines day (logistics)

I am not much of an online shopper or a gifter, so I really didnt have any prior experience.

I searched a bit on Google for “Valentines day gift” and found some ideas. But had no clue about the logistics part.

Realizing that logistics is going to be the main bottleneck, I turned towards products with ensured delivery. Check if it can be delivered first and then choose amongst those that can be delivered.

This took me to Amazon – the platform with most variety for getting things delivered anywhere in US. I hadnt used Amazon much before, so this was like a new user using Amazon for the first time.

As soon as I landed on the home page, I saw a “Valentines day gift ideas” banner on top-right. Boom! Exactly what I was looking for!

Clicking on it showed me some products, categorized into various sections. The products were good, but not that great. Many were generic products, not really special for Valentines. But I see that can be a personal choice and since I havent done shopping before, Amazon cant really do any personalization for me (Readers: Should I expect my shopping suggestions to improve over time?)

The real bummer was that many of these were out of stock or could not be shipped by Valentines day. Damn! Then why show me these as suggestions for Valentines in the first place?

Realizing that I was back to my first problem of first finding out items that can be shipped, I started looking for other alternatives on Amazon. Is there a way to filter products that can be delivered by a particular date?

Didnt find anything and was back to where I had started.

While looking at the “Valentines day gift ideas” section, I had found some interesting items. I decided to combine them to form an interesting gift package.

When I went to check their delivery date, they were ready to be delivered within 2 days. Boom! I thought I found what I was looking for. There were still a few days left and hence I thought this will work. But when I checked out my cart, there was no option to select a different delivery date. I could use a 2-day shipping, or a 7-9 days shipping. I cant use a specific date. Damn!!

Back to square one 🙂

I decided to wait just 2 days before Valentines and order then. To ensure that it reaches on the desired day, neither before, nor after.

I happily ordered it 2 days before, assuming it will be delivered as expected.

And then it got delivered early. The mighty Amazon became extra efficient and delivered it the same day! Damn! Lol!

All this work for nothing.

All I wanted was to use Amazon in a way to deliver my Valentines day gift on Valentines day. And I couldn’t do that.

This makes me wonder why doesn’t Amazon do that? Maybe they cant always provide this option to choose an exact delivery date.

But Valentines is a big shopping day. I wonder if they can do a special delivery for that. Allow Valentines day as a delivery option. Maybe not for all products. But for items in the “Valentines day gift ideas”.

Readers: What do you think? Have you faced the same problem? Ever wished for Valentines day as a delivery option on Amazon?