This new trend of buying undelivered packages is inspiring scammers to come up with very effective scams.
Online shopping has attracted consumers for its convenience and is now a firmly established mode of consumption. But it has many drawbacks, including delivery errors and the scourge of packages that never arrive at their destination. These packages then become the famous “undelivered packages”. These can be “NPAI” packages (does not live at the address indicated), unclaimed packages when the owner has not collected their purchase within the allotted time, or the traditional lost packages that have been misplaced during delivery.
For some time now, these numerous undelivered packages have been all the rage online. Some platforms are in fact responsible for collecting them and then reselling them at very attractive prices. But a new trend often means a new scam, and lost packages are no exception. This is what the site indicates 60 million consumers who raised the alarm after receiving numerous reports of fraud based on the concept of “surprise” packages.
The idea of the surprise package is simple and tempting: companies offer to buy blind packages at very low prices, without knowing what they contain. Enough to add a bit of fun and suspense to your purchase and, in theory, to have from time to time a very nice surprise with a product that is worth two to three times the price at which you bought it.
But one of the testimonies collected by 60 million consumers is much less enthusiastic. A customer explains that upon receiving batches of NPAI parcels, purchased on a specialist site, the items discovered were in reality only old objects: “These are absolutely not lost parcels, but trinkets and old books in bulk that the site puts in envelopes with adhesive closures to make people believe that it is an order returned by a buyer, when in fact it is not.”
60 million consumers also collected the testimony of a consumer who was the victim of another site of the same type, offering batches of lost parcels ranging from 5kg to a ton, for a price range between 40 and 4000 euros. The parcels on sale are said to have come from various carriers such as Fnac, Amazon, Cdiscount, etc. The buyer, who filed a complaint, had spent more than 7000 euros on undelivered parcels, but never received anything. And he is not the only victim.
According to Capitala mother, who decided in December 2023 to offer original gifts to her children for Christmas, by ordering lost packages, spent 320 euros for 40 packages that she will never receive. According to Capital, this victim, who was obviously not reimbursed by the platform, reported the fraud to the General Directorate for the Suppression of Fraud (DGCCRF).