Christmas Gifts

[Dima_April 9]

Hello,
I'm thinking about Christmas shopping and since, my fiance won't be coming here for Christmas, after all - I need some suggestions.
1.) Is there any online stores that ship to Russia or a good online site in Russia, where I can purchase something and they send it to his house. I'd like it to be there by Christmas or at least New Years, since that seems to be the major holiday celebrated there.

2.) What do you think a Russian man, might like? When we thought he was going to visit, I asked him and all he wanted was me. How sweet is he?

Thanks

[mrsashko 16]

http://russian.alibaba.com/

A popular Amazon-like website.

Christmas is mostly not celebrated, New Year - is your holiday of choice.

[vbtwo 54]

Alibaba is a Chinese site though and it might take more than a month to get shipped to Russia. You can just buy something here and use a courier service like Meest (http://www.meest.us) to ship it by air and avoid the post office and it should get there in about 2 weeks, but will cost you around $50 to ship even a small package.

Disclaimer: I never used Meest to ship anything to Russia, but did ship to Ukraine multiple times and it always got there without any issues. By air to Ukraine took about a week and a half and by sea about 5 weeks.

[Dima_April 9]

Alibaba is a Chinese site though and it might take more than a month to get shipped to Russia. You can just buy something here and use a courier service like Meest (http://www.meest.us) to ship it by air and avoid the post office and it should get there in about 2 weeks, but will cost you around $50 to ship even a small package.

Disclaimer: I never used Meest to ship anything to Russia, but did ship to Ukraine multiple times and it always got there without any issues. By air to Ukraine took about a week and a half and by sea about 5 weeks.

Thank you, for this information. I'd never heard of this before. I'll definitely look into this. This way, I know what I buying and shipping too.

[Corey-Mariya 14]

ebay ships everwhere. Another option is buy a gift here and just mail it over via USPS; should take about 2-3 weeks just in time for New Years.

[Amy_and_Victor 159]

In Russia people don't give each other gifts for Christmas, not to mention that in RUB Christmas is Jan 7th. If you want to give him a present - do it for New Year, that's when Russians pile up boxes under New Year's tree.

Mentioned above Alibaba site has a lot of merchants but it's not reliable. Everything ships from China by local merchants who sell goods, it takes about a month if not longer to arrive and if you don't receive it there is almost no chances to get a refund or replacement, I've heard they simply ignore dissatisfied customers.

1) Check local offers first. Sometimes local stores have partnership with local courier delivery services so you can buy something online in their store and independent courier service will deliver it to the address. Then you don't have to worry about shipping it from another state/town. Try to avoid Russian Post service in Russia, it's very slow and unreliable, a lot of parcels get lost, damaged or stolen.

2) Avoid anything related to clothing or hygiene. Russian women so often give shirts, ties, sweaters, cologne, shaving gift sets etc. as a present that it even got into anecdotes in Russia and many mens just facepalming over it for years pretending that they were dreaming about another shirt to add to 20 of them in the closet, lol. It depends on age but some novelty electronic gift usually works great. If he likes to read - Kindle, if he has a car - mini jump starter, anything like this should be fine I think.

- Victor from Russia

Edited December 5, 2015 by Amy_and_Victor

[eekee 182]

I feel like you would know better what he wants than we would... just get him something he, as a person and not a part of the monolith that is Russian Men, would want, like you would for an American man.

[TBoneTX 45,286]

Russian women so often give shirts, ties, sweaters, cologne, shaving gift sets etc. as a present [...]

This begs for this:

A man stood at the department store's counter, selecting neckties. He passed over many, chose a few, and occasionally encountered a terrible specimen that he would fling aside contemptuously. These, the clerk would pick up and place in a separate tray.

"What are you going to do -- burn them?" the man asked scornfully.

"No, sir," explained the clerk. "We save these for the women who come in to buy ties for men."

[Dima_April 9]

Sorry for spelling mistakes (was writing quickly); also don't get why my an affectionate word was crossed out with ###### ~ but whatever. Still need help taking that down. Why can't you delete your own post? Seems silly.

[TBoneTX 45,286]

Post removed at OP's request. The quickest way to get a post removed is to hit the "report" button below it, so that whichever Moderator is logged on can deal with it promptly.

[Dima_April 9]

Thank you! I hope he didn't see what I bought him for New Years!
Maybe now, he should join the site, as we have the second Notice of Action!

[TBoneTX 45,286]

Congratulations on the NOA2!

Yes, have him join the site. If you decide to share your current account, a wonderful system for letting us know who's posting is just above -- see how Victor signs his posts to distinguish himself from Amy. (Hi, Victor!)

[Dima_April 9]

Thank you TBoneTX!
I'll ask him, if he'd like to join the group and if so, I'll change my member name to reflect both of us.
I keep calling the NVC, but all I get is, we're busy call back later. Is it always like that? I was trying to get our case number and see if they have sent anything to the embassy.

[TBoneTX 45,286]

You might have to give your petition time (length, variable) to reach the NVC.

[Amy_and_Victor 159]

I keep calling the NVC, but all I get is, we're busy call back later. Is it always like that? I was trying to get our case number and see if they have sent anything to the embassy.

When I was going through this process NVC used to take about 1-3 weeks to process the case and then it may take few days to arrive embassy so you may need to wait for a bit before anything happens.

- Victor from Russia