Many parents love sending college gift baskets or care packages to their hard-working students, and virtually every student loves receiving them. At the same time, getting gifts to your student intact can be a little bit of a challenge.
Here are a few tips for ensuring that your package gets to your student on time and in one piece.
Gift basket (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
First, you should consider a basket produced professionally rather than a homemade basket.
There is no denying that handmade baskets show thought and are fun to put together, but they can be expensive to ship, and they can easily be damaged during the journey.
A gift basket producer will build shipping into the purchasing price, work with a high-quality shipper, and know exactly how to package and cushion baskets so that they arrive intact.
Plus, if the package does get lost or damaged in transit, you will not have to deal with the hassle — someone from the care package company will.
You also want to make sure that you are clear on when the basket will arrive and what are the contents. Items like workbooks, pen, personalized souvenirs, etc are great to have when you can looking something for students.
Many parents send college gift baskets in anticipation of finals, but if the baskets are ordered too late, they may arrive halfway through finals or even after the semester is over.
Worse yet, if you are not careful, a basket might arrive during a break when your student is not even on campus to pick it up. To prevent this, you should always read a company’s policy for processing orders as well as shipping the package.
Finally, make sure that you tell your students to keep an eye out for something. Often in dorms or apartments, packages like college gift baskets are delivered to the main office, and students later receive a notification that something is waiting for them.
If there is a mix-up somewhere in this process, the mistake might not be caught for weeks. You do not have to spoil the surprise and announce that a gift basket is en route, but tell your student to expect a package from you sometime soon.
This will help ensure that the package gets to your students when it is needed.
