Sell those gifts, the sales are on

While tens of thousands of bargain-hunting Kiwis prepare for the Boxing Day sales, many have already discarded gifts just hours after they were unwrapped.

Christmas lunch was yet to settle when hundreds of members of auction site Trade Me listed items such as earrings, DVDs, digital photo frames and cosmetics on the website, some complete with photos of the items and comments such as "Unwanted Christmas gift, just not my kinda thing".

The spare cash generated by the sale of unwanted goods could be good news to retailers who have admitted sales destined for Boxing Day began earlier to stimulate a surge in spending to buck falling sales figures.

Paymark, which deals with about three-quarters of all eftpos payments, processed almost three million transactions on the last Saturday before Christmas.

However, the number of transactions was down 4.2 percent on the same time last year, and the spending of about $162 million was 8.8 percent lower.

The figures did not take into account the number of New Zealanders avoiding queues by shopping online this year about 1.5 million, according to one survey.

A Nielsen Online report showed that 65 percent of Kiwi Internet users had planned to make an online purchase for Christmas this year.

Each of those shoppers was expected to spend nearly $500 in total, which would effectively add a further $738 million to the total spent on gifts.

Early this month, the Commerce Commission issued a statement urging shoppers to "be savvy" at "one of the busiest" times of the year, and to voice concerns over deals they believed to be misleading or unfair.

- © Fairfax NZ News