You can't please everyone, and Yahoo's survey on holiday gift-giving proves it. According to a Harris Interactive poll of 2400 U.S. adults, 86 percent reported having received a holiday gift they didn't like. Of these, 66 percent have pretended to like the gift; 58 percent put it away in a closet or storage; 41 percent returned it; 37 percent re-gifted the item; and 27 percent donated it to charity.

Re-gifting, now an annual tradition, is the practice of secretly giving unwanted gifts to others. And online auction sites want you to cash out your unwanted gifts by selling them on their sites.

Yahoo suggested its auction marketplace as a way for everyone to get what they really wanted for the holidays. "With free auction listings it is easy to get cash for what you don't want to keep, and with thousands of products listed, from designer handbags to electronics, it is also easy to find what you did want at a great price."

eBay also commissioned a survey that showed nearly 60 percent of Americans receive unwanted gifts during the holidays, and 52 percent of them admit to re-gifting. And it too suggested recipients sell unwanted gifts on its site - as a "polite alternative to re-gifting" (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m12/i27/s03).

Yahoo Auctions' survey also revealed the most unpopular gifts to receive. One in three U.S. adults who receive holiday gifts do not have a least favorite type of gift. A surprising 47 percent of U.S. adults who do have a least favorite gift to receive say that their least favorite is a charitable donation made in their name. Another 29% reported that food or drink gifts are their least favorite, followed by clothing (23%), handmade gifts (22%) and savings bonds (22%).

http://auctions.yahoo.com