Can I use a voucher that was mistakenly sent to me?

A letter arrived at my home with the right address, but wrong name. There was no return address, so I opened it to find a birthday card and a $120 liquor gift voucher. Can I spend the voucher?
G.T., Port Macquarie, NSW

A: Sure, you can spend the $120 liquor gift voucher, but first you’ve got to earn it by doing exactly $120 worth of detective work, trying to track down the gift recipient. Private detective fees range from $75-$100 an hour, so that’s roughly an hour-and-a-half’s worth of investigating, once you take into account travel expenses, surveillance installation, wiretapping charges, informant costs, weapon maintenance and GST.

Start by sitting down at your private-detective desk and tilting the window louvres so they cast sinister, film-noirish shadows across your face. Then tilt them back again, because those shadows are really annoying (as is the red flashing “HOTEL” sign across the street).

Now open your old, clunky Underwood laptop-typewriter and Google the name on the envelope, searching for possible contact details, Facebook pages and Insta images, all while puffing on your e-cigarette (in Rum ‘n’ Regret flavour). Can’t find the person? Chase a fresh lead: analyse the birthday card for handwritten clues, check with local council about previous homeowners, or just yell out the window, “Hey, any of you neighbours have a birthday recently and also happen to be low-to-moderate-level alcoholics?”

If you locate the person within an hour and a half, forward the voucher to them, then fix yourself a well-earned drink, which you’ll have to pay for yourself because you’re voucherless.

But if your detective work fails, then you’ve succeeded! Pop on your fedora and ankle it down to the gin joint to buy 120 smackers worth of giggle juice to tip down your clam-lipped kisser, see?

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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