Amazon's Ingenious Patent to Replace Your Bad Gifts

Method and process for avoiding bad gifts:

1) Ask for cash only like a rube.

2) Spend it on whatever you want.

3) ...But on teh intertubes.

An interesting idea but there is no way stuff like this should be patentable.

What's being patented here? It seems like it's just automating a standard gift receipt process by adding a few rules.

The innovation is that when gifts are sent to you, they can be automatically changed, or converted into credit.

So instead of this wasteful, time-consuming process where you return the unwanted gift to Amazon and get something else, you can just preemptively do it in a sneaky fashion, saving money for Amazon and time for you.

The wizard diagram listed on the patent is a complete rip off of the rules dialog included as part of Outlook. I don't have a Windows version of Outlook available right now, but it's very similar.

This is horrendous. What happened to talking to people? Or being grateful?

There's this odd taboo where people don't want to know (or choose) what their present is.