Was on the phone to Amazon's Indian call centre for an hour trying to get the order number for this vacuum. You can't return it without the order number and since it was marked as a gift they didn't include the receipt (which would have the order number). I still couldn't get the order number out of these people despite the Amazon website clearly stating that if you don't have the order number, contact customer services with the sender's email and postal address and it can be resolved.

So that's her gift to me: an enormous chore. I can't even dispose of this without paying the council to pick it up.

I was looking online to see if I'm the only person who experiences this. Am I an ungrateful jerk?

Answer: no. The internet is awash with stories of people telling their parents/friends not to buy gifts because they don't have the space, the gifts aren't in line with their moral standards ("we only buy wooden toys for little Sebastian", for example), or they don't like the sender wasting money on crap that will just get thrown out.

The internet asserts that people who continue to send gifts in spite of repeated requests not to are narcissistic, controlling, manipulitive assholes. That seems about right. "All I did was send you a present. Throw it away." That's exactly her response.

Somebody says to me, "Hey, listen Baron. I appreciate the gesture and all but your gifts are shit, I move a lot so don't want to amass more stuff that just has to be moved, and your crappy gifts really upset me" I stop giving that person gifts. Isn't that the natural, non-psychotic response? You can think that the person is ungrateful if you want, but you immediately cross that person off your Christmas gift-buying list. "I'm not going to buy gifts for this person who thinks that my gifts are shit and he doesn't have room for them anyway so they just get immediately thrown out. That's just a huge waste of my money."

If I can't get this order number from my mother, I'm just going to call Salvation Army or something and see if they can pick it up. I also have a coffee machine and hair dryer that I had to buy when she came to visit that I'd like to get rid of. Lightly used, still in boxes.