At one point, my parents bought a toilet from Amazon, and got along with it a 12-foot long balance beam.
Trying to return it was a bit of an ordeal:
Trying to return it was a bit of an ordeal:
Me 'Hi- I just called about a 12 foot balance beam
delivered to me – along with my toilet – in error.
Are you the one I talked to?'
'No'
Me- 'Excellent!'Can I get your account number to get started?
But mine was a book, yours was a beam. So I got off easy I guess :-)
But giving an incorrectly addressed package to your neighbor seems like a general good idea :)
I've offered to pay for stuff since it saves me the bother of buying it again some time in the future and the reps will go out of their way to make sure I can't do that. Even to the extent of saying they've charged my card when they actually haven't.
A package gets marked undeliverable. I go ahead and re-order the item. The next day the package is marked delivered on-time (it definitely didn't arrive the day before), and is un-undeliverable. I now have to cancel the replacement I ordered, and have to talk to customer support to make them eat the cost of it, because fuck them. There's no record on the amazon page that it was ever marked undeliverable at all - I now have started taking screenshots.
I'm assuming this is some fuckery played by people in the field having trouble hitting their metrics, but I don't actually know. I just know that at least once this has ended with a next-day-shipping replacement arriving alongside the "undeliverable" item, and Amazon demanding I mail it back to get my refund. Because nothing says "fun" like now having to take the time out of my day to ship an item back to them so as not to get double-charged due to their own fucked up shipping practices.
"I think I accidentally received a refund of my mattress.", I said. "you want to return your mattress? I will send you a shipping label." they helped.
"NO! I have the mattress, and want to keep it, but also got the money back. I want to return the money!". "OK, I will contact the seller to take care of your refund."
"you don't understand! I want to return the money. The seller accidentally returned the money after delivering my mattress!."
They finally understood and asked the seller. The seller didn't refund anything. Amazon didn't either. But I have both the money and the mattress to this day. Go figure.
Handling the refund costs hours of work and might end up being more expensive than the return/refund.
>Amazon is now making arrangements with CEVA – some top secret group which is responsible for finding homes for lost balance beams and other unwanted and unusually sized packages.
I imagine there's still no formal process in place for "oops we sent you a thing, keep it or throw it out or whatever"
I guess that in their model of profitability they have included "items gone rogue" (returns are calculated in the financial statements, auditors "love" returns - especially for purchases made on year -1 and being returned on year 0)(I assume write-offs hurt less the bottom line/the auditors are less angry as long as it is not a fraudulent write-off).
Back to the story, a month later they sent me the item I ordered, free of charge and a friend of mine got a lovely hairdryer on her birthday. And I honestly didn't know that hairdryers can cost more than £€$100!!!
Like, a simple magic phrase that makes it clear you don't want the thing they (perhaps accidentally) dumped on you and that they should come remove it, something like "I don't want it, come take it back."
But for something as large as a balance beam it's more of a problem.
(I don't mean they should never make a mistake, I mean they should have a robust process for dealing with the mistakes)
Although it's funny how my perspective on this has changed over time:
Once, I would just be delighted that I could get a company to accept a return and not eat my money for their fuck-up.
Now I take that for granted, and I demand that they come take care of the logistics of removing it from my home as well, because I have 0% intention of paying for your shipping fuck-up with my time. If you expect me to go stand on line at the UPS store to return an item I shouldn't be dealing with, I should be able to send you an invoice for my hourly rate.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...
That part make this kind of confusing. If it doesn't, then can it still be considered a gift?
The context here is companies realized they could mail out merchandise that was never ordered, then demand the recipient pay for it. This is why the law you cited says it "constitutes an unfair method of competition and an unfair trade practice". This law is combating that practice, not punishing companies for making mistakes.
> When it talks about mailing unordered merchandise, it's not talking about stuff done in error but rather mailing of merchandise the sender knows was not ordered.
Since you apparently cannot click through the link I posted, I'll quote for you the entire legal definition of "unordered merchandise":
>(d) For the purposes of this section, “unordered merchandise” means merchandise mailed without the prior expressed request or consent of the recipient.
That's it. None of that context you're imagining. Unordered merchandise is anything you get that you did not order. It doesn't matter if somebody else ordered it. It doesn't matter if nobody ordered it. It doesn't matter if you ordered something else. All that matters is whether the recipient ordered what was actually mailed, because that's all that the legal definition stipulates. The extra requirements you are trying to add are not part of the law.
> What do you do when you receive merchandise that you didn’t order? According to the Federal Trade Commission, you don’t have to pay for it.
This is on ftc.gov. Did they write it or not? Do they stand behind it?
The natural inference is that this is an article written by a third party which appears on the FTC's official website for unclear reasons. Is that true? And if so, is it nevertheless somehow binding on the FTC?
“Ok. hold on please…” Comes back 2 min later… “It sounds like it was sent in error. But no problem- you do not have to return it to us. You can keep it, or donate it to charity or just dispose of it yourself”
You know, mail out $20 sets of headphones with no return address, then bill people $500 a few months later.
They certainly can ask.