By Nick Gelling
Product Test Journalist | Kaipūrongo Whakamātautau Hautaonga
The festive season is over, which means we’ve entered advertising season for mail-order retailer Chrisco. We took a look at their tech prices and found you can spend about 20% more than if you shopped at a regular store.
What is Chrisco?
Chrisco is an online and mail-order store. It promises to make Christmas spending easier through its layby model.
You decide what you want to buy for Christmas at the beginning of the year.
You pay off your purchases by the end of October.
Chrisco sends them to you in November or early December.
It’s a reasonably transparent model. You can’t get stuck in a debt trap like you can with alternative financing arrangements, such as credit cards. However, Chrisco charges a premium for the convenience.
Last year, we assessed Chrisco’s food hampers against other options, like savings club Hampsta and supermarket Christmas clubs. Chrisco’s hampers worked out much more expensive than buying the food at the supermarket – at the time, we found you’d pay about $460 less if you went to Woolworths and used a loyalty card.
Food is only one aspect of Christmas though. Chrisco also sells toys, fragrances and technology so you might consider using it to pay off your gifts throughout the year.
Why Chrisco and technology aren’t a good fit
I’m a technology reporter, so I’ll stick to what I know and focus on the electronic gifts listed in Chrisco’s catalogue.
The key thing to remember is that technology evolves quickly. Ordering products 9 months in advance could lead to your loved one unwrapping last year’s tech.
That might not matter to you (or them), but technology also gets discounted relatively quickly. Once a new model comes out, the price of the older model can drop by hundreds of dollars over a 9-month period. Locking in a price in January can leave you spending top dollar for outdated technology.
We asked Chrisco about this and were told that, in some cases, customers may receive the newer version of a product they ordered.
“This commonly occurs with categories such as TVs, laptops and some mobile phones. Whether a newer model is supplied depends on the timing of supplier upgrades and how this aligns with our purchasing and delivery windows,” a spokesperson told us.
In other words, if the new product comes out near the end of the year, Chrisco won’t have time to upgrade your delivery.
You’ll pay more for your tech with Chrisco
As with food hampers, your tech will cost more if you choose to pay it off through Chrisco.
The Apple AirPods 4 cost $299 from Chrisco but can be bought directly from Apple for $249 (with free shipping). Similarly, Garmin’s Forerunner 55 smartwatch is $450 from Chrisco, but we didn’t find it selling for more than $399 at any other New Zealand store.
Chrisco said its customers are thinking about more than just price. “Many customers value the convenience of being able to order their Christmas food, gifts and homeware in advance, set up manageable payments and then simply wait for delivery closer to Christmas. For many families, this removes the need to navigate busy shopping centres during the Christmas period, offering a more stress-free and planned approach to their Christmas shopping,” a spokesperson said.
Are Chrisco’s tech bundles good value?
Chrisco often sells products bundled with accessories that are usually sold separately. This makes it harder to compare prices from other stores to figure out if you’re getting a good deal. But we’ve done the maths for you. With some bundles, you’ll pay more than 20% more than if you shopped at a store. For example, a Nintendo Switch 2 bundle costs $1,599 from Chrisco. But, if you bought each item in the bundle individually at retail, the total cost would be $1,276.
The DJI Neo Drone costs $850.50 from Chrisco and comes with a nice backpack. But PB Tech sells the same drone for $529 and the backpack for $79. That’s an additional 40% charge for buying from Chrisco (or 61%, if you don’t really care about the backpack).
A better way to save for Christmas
Save on the inflated prices of layby providers like Chrisco by organising your own system to pay for your 2026 Christmas gifts.
Create a new savings bank account. Make sure you can’t access it from your EFTPOS or debit cards.
Decide roughly what gifts you intend to buy and do a quick price search to calculate how much they will all cost. You don’t have to be precise from the start because you can change your mind later.
Divide the total cost into weekly, fortnightly or monthly instalments, depending on how often you receive income.
Set up an automatic payment that moves your instalment amount to your new savings account each time you get paid.
Once it gets to October, or whenever you want to buy presents, move your ‘layby’ funds into an account you can spend from. You can cancel the automatic payment at this point or keep it running for the next year.
As a little bonus, you’ll also receive interest from your savings account as the year goes on.
