It’s great that you’ve decided to let us help make your Christmas easier this year.
Let’s help you get started as fast as possible and get the best from My Christmas Buddy!
What’s My Christmas Buddy for exactly?
Asking people what they’d like for Christmas is a pain. It takes time remembering who you need to buy for, asking them what they’d like, contacting them over and over again until you give up and buy them a gift card anyway. And then there’s managing your shopping list of gifts for everyone… it’s a pain.
My Christmas Buddy is our helper which is totally free and takes the pain away from all the above!
You use the app to send out requests for ideas however they will best answer you. That could be email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS, Twitter – whatever. The person gets their own exclusive web app into which they put their suggestions (how many you ask for is up to you!) and you get told as soon as they’ve sent them across.
Once you have ideas, you can check that they aren’t crazy, then add them to your shopping list in the app, which tracks who each is for and lets you easily mark them off when bought.
We do everything except the actual shopping and wrapping!
This sounds amazing! So how to use the App?
It’s really easy:
Login
- Open the app and sign in – or not! You can use the app as a Guest if you want to, but you won’t be able to access your lists or requests on any other device. We recommend signing in with a Google, Facebook or Apple account if you can for extra flexibility.
- To make it easier, we can send notifications to your phone when someone has sent you a gift idea. We need your permissions to send this so when asked, please allow us! We promise not to send you notifications about anything you aren’t expecting!
Sending requests to those lucky people you’re buying gifts for! - There are 2 areas which you can see at the bottom of the screen – Gift Requests and Shopping List.
Let’s start with the Gift Requests. - Tap the + button and choose who you want to send to.
You can do this quickly from your phone address book (it might ask you if it’s ok to access your address book – we like to be polite but you need to say Yes!) or type their name yourself. - You can also choose the maximum number of ideas you want from that person – it’s 3 by default but make it 1 or 100 – it’s up to you!
- Now pick how you want to send to them through the apps on your phone and we do the rest.
- You will see the person appear in your Gift Requests list and it’ll tell you when they’ve seen their message, opened it and sent ideas over to you.
- At the top of this screen you will soon see a message “You have X new gift ideas!” – tap on this to see what exciting suggestions have been sent and by who! Tap on each to see more details.
- When looking at ideas sent by each person you can tap the Add to Shopping List button to add it to your list if you want to buy it for them.
Shopping! - From the main screen of the app you’ll see a Shopping List option at the bottom. Tap this to see what you’re buying for people.
- The list is in 2 parts – “To Buy” and “Bought”. Once you’ve bought something on your list, tap the circle and it’ll move to the “Bought” section. It’s really that simple. If you make a mistake, tap the tick on the bought item to put it back into your “To Buy” list!
- Tap any item to see details about it and edit the details if you need to.
- How do I delete an item I don’t want? Just swipe right-to-left on an item and it’ll delete it from your list. This doesn’t delete it as an idea from the person, just removes from your list so you can add it again in future if you want to.
- I want to add something else to my list! That’s fine too. Tap the + button at the bottom of the Shopping List page and type in the details. You can say who it’s for but it won’t be linked to them through the requests page as they didn’t request it themselves, but it’s a great way to have all your shopping list in one place.
That’s it!
The app can do lots more, so there are some suggestions below for extra thing you might want to do, but if you have specific questions or need more info, check out the FAQs page which has a lot more detail!
Some extra helpful things you can do…
I haven’t heard from the person I sent a request to. How do I pester them?
Easy – in the Gift Requests area, tap the person you want to pester to see their page.
Now tap our Elf Helper (Buddy) in the top corner, and ask them to Re-send a message. They’ll give you the option to choose how to message them and will re-send a message on your behalf (you can edit the message before it goes out in case you want to say something different!)
I no longer like the person I sent a request to. Can I delete the request so they can’t send gift ideas to me?
Sure! In the Gift Requests area, tap on the person in the list, then tap on our Elf Helper (Buddy) in the top corner and ask them to Remove from my list. That’ll remove them and block the link they received so they can’t send any more ideas.
How do I add a gift idea on behalf of someone?
Whether it’s an elderly relative who struggles with tech or someone who’s too lazy to use the link you sent over, there will be times where you get a random SMS or call saying “just buy me a new sweater!”. That’s fine!
Tap on the person in the Gift Requests list to see their page and tap the + button at the bottom. You can them add their idea (a new Sweater!) into the list yourself so you can still benefit from the shopping list and other great features in the app.
So where can I get the app from?
It’s available for recent and not so recent Apple and Android devices, so go into the Apple App Store app or Google Play Store app on your phone and search for “MyChristmasBuddy” or “MyXmasBuddy”.
Remember to look out for the white parcel with the red background – that’s us!
More specifically, we run on any Apple device running iOS 11 or higher (iPhone 5s or later, and iPad 3 or later). On Android, if you’re running Android 6 or later then you’ll be fine too.
I have other questions!
If in doubt, tap on Buddy our Elf Helper in whichever screen you’re on and they will help! You can also use our FAQs page which is in the app menu or on the main website to get more details and ways to contact us directly if you’re really stuck!
Happy Shopping and Merry Christmas!!