Have you ever had the urge to let someone know that you’re thinking of them but don’t want to spend a fortune, or just don’t have their address? I love buying presents for people so was very excited to hear about Parcelgenie, the world’s first instant gift messaging app.

What is it? It is a phone app that gives you instant access to over 50 gifts that you can send to your friends/family ‘instantly’ by choosing the gift, adding a message and the recipient’s mobile number, and then paying for the gift. The app is available on the App Store, Windows phone 7, Windows 8 and Google Play.

Often I find that you want to send someone a little gift but you don’t have their address…this is where I think this app is a genius idea. Parcelgenie text the recipient to your gift for their address and send out your gift. All the gifts are token presents rather than things that are going to break the bank. The cheapest gift is just £2.99 including postage and the most expensive £14.99 including postage.

I wanted to send an old friend some retro sweets so I choose the Retro sweet box, I gave her number and Parcelgenie texted her using my number asking for her address. Here we hit a slight problem, my friend was worried she had been spammed so texted me to ask if I had sent this gift. I can understand why she would think this…to send your address to a strange number could cause doubts as to whether it was a genuine request or not. I suppose Parcelgenie could be looked up and then you would find that it is genuine. I think she was pleased to receive a little pressie from me.

My eldest son went off travelling last Monday so I thought his girlfriend may need cheering up so I sent her a Mega retro sweet box. The gift arrived the very next day, great service, and I know she was pleased to receive it.

Finally because I was starting to feel left out I sent a gift of Sweetshop sweets to my daughter. I liked being able to pay with my PayPal account if I wanted to, this means I didn’t need to put in any card details making the whole process very easy. We found the process of sending our address back slightly confusing at first, probably us though, but the gift arrived very promptly and my daughter was delighted to be sent a little box in the post. You can see the internal packaging above. We were a little disappointed at the number of sweets sent, however it did only cost £3.49 including postage and it’s the thought that counts. I am probably out of touch with the cost of things nowadays.

I will definitely be using this again, and again…different gifts are added regularly and I look forward to sending many more to my friends and family.

Disclosure: I was sent voucher codes to make two of the above purchases