A woman receives a never-ending flood of parcels from Amazon, but she hasn’t ordered anything. In addition, she should pay for the costs. MeinMMO explains what could be behind it.
What are these packages? Anca Nitu, a woman from Langley, Canada, reports a spate of junk mail. Almost every day she finds a new Amazon package on her doorstep. Nitu is said to have received over 50 such packages in the last 2 months.
The packages mainly contain women’s shoes that Nitu did not order. Nevertheless, she is said to pay the United Parcel Service (UPS) over 300 Canadian dollars in cash on delivery fees. That’s the equivalent of a little over 200 euros. There could be a nasty scam behind it (via 3DJuegos).
Packet flood could be a savings trick by dealers
What’s up with the packages? While the exact reason for the unusual problem is not known, Nitu suspects that third-party sellers on Amazon are using their address to sell goods.
Because the Canadian noticed that the packages all contained a return slip next to the shoes. Apparently, customers from North America wanted to return their shipments, but instead of going to a warehouse, they ended up at Nitu’s door.
What’s behind it? The Better Business Bureau (BBB), a non-profit consumer organization, suspects a take-back scam. Merchants, typically from countries like China or India, could avoid shipping and storage fees by providing private residence for returns.
This is because third-party providers using Amazon fulfillment centers are required to pay for shipping, handling, and returning products.
So if an Amazon customer wants to return their order, BBB merchants can try to save money by providing a private return address instead of paying for overseas shipping (via CBC).
For Nitu, the constant deliveries are a huge psychological drain. “I tremble when I see packages in front of my door,” she told CBC. “They keep making progress and it just doesn’t stop.”
Due to the stress, she lost her appetite and had trouble sleeping. She laments the lack of support from Amazon and UPS.
UPS behaves “unreasonably”, Amazon initiates “corrective measures”.
How does the affected person proceed? Nitu says she disputes UPS’s charges, saying they are “completely unreasonable”: “I tried to explain the situation and they weren’t very nice, to put it mildly.”
UPS made no official statement to CBC. However, the BBB said it supports correspondence between Nitu and the parcel service’s headquarters.
The Canadian also contacted Amazon directly, but even after numerous emails and hours of phone calls to customer service, she was unable to stop the flood of packages.
She has already filed a complaint with the RCMP, the so-called “Mounties”. However, they didn’t even know where to start with the investigation, said Nitu. Therefore, they would have advised her to open and dispose of the packages.
Amazon told CBC that the person concerned could use the Unwanted Package Report form. The case is being processed and corrective action is being taken. However, as of August 9, 2023, the issue was not resolved.
Amazon’s returns system isn’t the first to cause problems, albeit in a different way. For example, it indirectly led to a gamer only receiving an empty box instead of the ordered processor:
Gamer buys high-end processor on Amazon, gets an empty box for 400 euros: The error is obvious