At Ripple Effect Gifts we pride ourselves on offering free delivery on all hampers, right across Australia!

To ensure that our customers can rely on our promise, we have arrangements in place with several courier companies. But sometimes, when we are at our busiest, several is not enough.

Recently, with deliveries due to corporate customers, we arranged with a new courier company to make these deliveries. With deliveries due on the Tuesday, it was not good news to receive an email from the courier on the Saturday explaining that Australia wide didn’t ummm, errr, ooops – actually mean all of Australia. It didn’t even mean all of Victoria. Hamilton, Horsham, Warrnambool and other places along the way were not part of the delivery area of this national courier company. And that is where our hampers were going.

An added twist to this tale lay in the fact that the Monday was a public holiday and the chances of recruiting a new courier were minimal at best and impossible at worst.

So what do we at Ripple Effects Gifts do when a delivery company lets us down at the last minute?

We get in our cars and drive a total of 1500 km in one day to deliver to our customers. Obviously!

On hearing of this challenge, our loyal and supportive team members, emailed, phoned and texted us with offers of being a Courier For The Day (CFTD). We were blown away by the generosity and affection of our team and found ourselves with more drivers than we needed. Amazing.

So at 6am on Tuesday we set out  to deliver to the far reaches of South West Victoria. We blew a kiss to South Australia as we nipped over the border and enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way. One of our CFTD was ecstatic when she saw whales of the coast of Port Campbell and another reported that the ‘best pie ever’ was to be found on the road to Hamilton. This is illustrative of our team – there is always, always, always something to be grateful for. In the case of an unexpected day of driving, it was whales and pies. But not whale pies.

All of our customers reported their hampers being delivered on time and with a huge smile from our CFTD.

With round trips including one of 700km and another of 400km, we are justifiably proud and delighted with our efforts.

This is what we love about our team at Ripple Effect Gifts. We work together to support our ethos that the idea of the giving of a gift can create a ripple of love, kindness and generosity. We also put that ethos into practice. Not one of our CFTD expected anything in return for their generous and kindhearted offers. Their motivation was to support Ripple Effect Gifts in providing exciting and innovative hampers.

But of course, we wouldn’t allow our CFTD to go unrewarded for their loyal endeavours. It was with pleasure that we made our own deliveries to our CFTD of gift vouchers and hand written cards of thanks.

This is how we roll.