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For some thrifty consumers, there’s no shame in regifting
BY LESLIE EARNEST Los Angeles Times

   Meredith Red is a screenwriter who knows nothing about making noodles. And she likes it that way.
   So the pasta maker she received as a wedding present became the gift that kept on giving. Sometime around her first anniversary she passed it on, never used and freshly wrapped, to a friend who was getting married.
   “She was thrilled,” said Red, a Los Angeles resident. “She had me over for pasta.”
   Regifting — a word whose derivation has been traced to a 1995 “Seinfeld” episode — is emerging from the closet. “It’s a dirty little secret, and everybody does it,” Red said. “And if they don’t admit to it, they’re totally lying.”
   Although experts don’t know when the practice started, it’s probably as old as gift-giving itself. These days it’s more popular than ever.
   Economic stressors are nudging people to regift, as is the desire to recycle, said Kim McGrigg, a spokeswoman for Money Management International, which operates a Web site, http://www.regiftable.com, on which people can pick up tips and share stories. (Among the more tragic tales: A couple received a hideously ugly serving platter and gave it to a friend who took it to an antiques expert and learned it was made by a famous Italian designer and was worth about $2,000.)
   Money Management takes occasional opinion surveys on the matter, and nearly 60 percent of the people it polled in October admitted they had regifted, a 4 percent increase over 2005. One in four said it was a good way to trim expenses, a 27 percent jump. “Things are more challenging for consumers than they have been in past years,” McGrigg said. “Consumers are telling us they’re looking for ways to curb their holiday spending.”
   There are rules that practitioners swear by, including: Never regift something that obviously has been used; remove all traces of the original wrapping before rewrapping; and — this is key — avoid returning a gift to the person who first gave it to you.
   Cathy Tran of San Francisco was on the receiving end of the last faux pas two years ago. She listened to an acquaintance grumble about the crummy Christmas gifts she had received — socks and a calendar — and a moment later was presented with the calendar, along with a cheery “Merry Christmas!”
   “She was like, ‘I got you this gift, it’s really great, isn’t it?’ ” said Tran, an e-mail marketer. “She didn’t turn out to be a very good friend either.”
   Bloopers like that aside, regifting can be appropriate, said Bruce Weinstein , who writes a bi-weekly ethics column for Businessweek. com and is also known as the Ethics Guy .
   “Not only do we have a right to do it, we ought to do it in most cases,” he said. “We have an ethical obligation not to be wasteful.”
   Maybe so, but many adherents don’t want their names linked to the practice. One local resident who would speak only anonymously said she had been regifting for a decade and added that, so far, she hadn’t been caught.
   “It’s a social taboo. I feel horrible when I do it but I know this person is going to love this,” said the woman, who fast-forwards gifts that she thinks someone else would like but are “so not me” -- scarves, angel decorations and Christopher Radko ornaments.
   But not to people on her A-list.
   “To my really, really good friends, I would never regift,” she said. “To the B-list, it’s more acceptable.”
   You would think the trend would be viewed as bad news by retailers scrambling to reel shoppers into stores. But they aren’t losing any sleep, said Daniel Butler of the National Retail Federation, the industry’s largest trade group.
   “It started with a purchase in a store, so retailers don’t think of it as lost business,” he said, adopting a glass-half-full attitude. And regifters, he added, still have to buy wrapping paper, bows and tape.
   Still, it can be a brutal business. Just ask Marie Lecrivain, who many years ago at age 6 bought a blueand-white rhinestone key chain at Pick ’n Save for her great-grandmother.
   “She gave it back to me on my next birthday,” said Lecrivain, a grant writer in Los Angeles with a long memory. “I hate regifting.”

  
  
  

SURE...go ahead and regift. If it has never been used and you know another person would enjoy it........why not!! It saves you a few  bucks and you make another person happy! It's a win/win situation.

REGIFT.....