Help me scratch a New Zealander's back - literally.

April 30, 2024 9:14 AM

An old friend is laid up in a hospital in Dunedin, NZ. He offhandedly mentioned that he'd love to have a simple bamboo backscratcher, and I'd like to have one delivered to him. What's the most sensible way to do this, given that I'm in California?

I'm talking about your basic back-scratching device, like this one, for example. Nothing fancy.

Does it make the most sense to order this via NZ Amazon, for instance, and have it shipped as a gift? Should I contact Uber Eats/delivery in Dunedin and have them handle it? Should I use a service like Taskrabbit? If so, where should I instruct them to buy this item? Are there other options I'm not thinking of, including, perhaps, some that may be local to NZ or Dunedin that I wouldn't know about?

For something so small and cheap, I don't really want to pay an arm and a leg for delivery.

Thank you!

posted by Dr. Wu to Shopping (5 answers total)

Amazon Australia will indeed ship many items to New Zealand.
posted by eschatfische at 10:17 AM on April 30

I'd make a post in https://www.reddit.com/r/dunedin/ and see what happens. If I lived there I would drop one off for you myself but it's a looong drive from here.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:23 PM on April 30

My fear would be that since hospitals in NZ are a shit show (always but especially at the moment through no fault of the extremely hardworking people they are staffed by), I really don't know if you send something to the hospital that it will actually end up with the recipient. I have never been to the hospital in Dunedin but I've been to many throughout the rest of the country. No one even answers the phone most of the time.

I agree with the idea to post in the Dunedin subreddit. I am not familiar with it but I'm familiar with other NZ city subreddits and I'm always really impressed by how people are willing to step up for others. I'd just offer to get it posted to someone's house, and have them deliver it. You could do Amazon AU but it would probably take a week or so to get here.

Taskrabbit doesn't exist here. We have a service that is similar called Ezy Peazy but I just had a look and there are literally no listings in Dunedin so it might not be used down there.
posted by BeeJiddy at 4:59 PM on April 30 [2 favorites]

Could you find a local florist? They may be used to making deliveries to the hospital and might be able to coordinate receiving a package if you find a back scratcher online to order.
posted by bruinfan at 7:59 PM on April 30

Might be worth checking if the hospital has a gift shop? A back scratcher seems like the kind of thing hospital gift shop might carry.
posted by platinum at 8:11 AM on May 1