My cousin just recently moved to Australia and her birthday is coming up. We are sending cards and such snail mail but I was curious about what sort of options we have for gift certificates or online gifts.
Aussies, are there any popular U.S. chains over there that could take a U.S./dollar gift card and turn it into Australian money? Any online presences that ship to Australia with a minimum of fuss and expense?
Thanks for any help or advice!
Borders has about 25 stores in Australia, but I’m not sure whether a gift certificate from them in US currency would work in Australia.
You might also be able to order an Australian-currency gift card using the Australian Borders website.
I will advise, however, that this is likely to trigger some alarms with your credit card company - as it should, really: someone using a US-based card to order a gift card from an overseas merchant, to an overseas address. So you might want to use a credit card that you can do without for a few days.
Some years back, I ordered some books from an Australian merchant to be sent to a friend in Oz. A month or two later, I ordered some French-language books from Amazon (the French version - amazon.com.fr or whatever) to be sent to a family friend in New Jersey. Though the credit card company didn’t quibble over the first transaction, the second one got their attention and they suspended my card until I was able to call them and confirm that the charges were legit.
As an aside: the bank did this without NOTIFYING ME in ANY WAY. So, I went to use the card in a store, and it was declined, which was the first I heard of it. Some automatic payments got rejected as well.
I complained to the bank, and they basically shrugged. When the same thing happened a month or so later, and again the bank said they never notified the cardholder in such a situation, I cancelled the card. IIRC, it was [del]SH[/del]Citibank.
Drat - per Borders’ FAQ, you can’t order gift cards online:
http://www.borders.com.au/faqs (supposedly it’ll be available soon). You can order books (etc.) themselves and have them sent to your recipient.
I’ll note that a more common term in Australia is gift voucher, and the service evoucher.com.au is a very flexible way of giving - there’s a long list of merchants, you can sort by location or type of store, have the recipient emailed or mailed a physical card, or go with a ‘superevoucher’ valid for any of the participating stores. AND, they allow payment from non-Australian credit cards.
I haven’t used the service myself, but it looks pretty well thought out to me. Hope this is useful!
Send her a “Care package” with American treats. For example, while you can buy Oreo cookies in Australia, those Oreo’s are made in Indonesia and taste really crappy.
In return, have her send to you some real Aussie treats such as Tim Tams.
Beware of the exchange rates. Many can be high to excess, even to the point they’re not worth it.
I have a friend in Christchurch, NZ and I found anything she may want I can ship (and vice versa) for far cheaper than any GC or the like, due to the exchange rates.
I don’t think it’s the exchange rates: it’s that books in Australia and New Zealand are priced significantly higher than in the United States. So, I agree, if you know what they want, it may be better to send from the U.S.
Thanks for the advice. I think I might just stick to a care package. She has mentioned a couple of times how disorienting the grocery store is, with items that are almost-but-not-quite-the-same as the American stuff she’s used to.
Good to know about the oreos. Any other suggestions?
It can’t be the exchange rate as that would work in your favour, buy the friend a gift voucher worth $60 US and it’ll be worth something like $100 NZ.
Not really a fair swap. Tim Tams are an order of magnitude better than Oreos (even those made in the US). 
One thing I do stock up on when I’m in the US is good quality honey and mustard pretzels. Damned if I can find any good ones here.
Please be somewhat careful about what you send in the way of food items. Oz quarantine can be quite strict.
By the way you could lead her to this online store:
www.usafoods.com.au so she could get some familiar goodies
Missed edit window
What you can and cannot send:
http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/import
Foods that are packaged aren’t usually a problem. I’ve had friends from the US send boxes of cereal (there are very few cinnamon flavoured breakfast cereals widely available in Australia, and I can’t think of any with marshmallow pieces in them now that the limited release Pokemon cereal has gone out of production) and they always got here fine. Customs didn’t intercept the package into which a well-meaning friend had put a packet of Kool-Aid which subsequently ruptured on the trip over… but I bet they would have been unamused if they had.
H’m. American in Aus here…
One thing you cannot find is root beer; I’ve ordered it from usafoods with no problem, so I imagine you can send it (well marked as ‘fragile’ and ‘do not shake’).
Consumer electronics are also significantly more expensive - pen drives and the like might be appropriate. Heck, just being willing to ship stuff from US stores to her would be a good and kind act (there’s currently a Pit thread about how hard it can be to get US retailers, especially online ones, to ship to overseas addresses).