

Amazon's Ingenious Patent to Replace Your Bad Gifts - ngoel36
http://qz.com/39085/amazons-ingenious-patent-on-replacing-bad-gifts-with-something-you-actually-want/

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noonespecial
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.

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

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

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sirclueless
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.

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area51mafia
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.

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

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lucian1900
There's this odd taboo where people don't want to know (or choose) what their
present is.

