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Comment by sen | Hacker News Reader

Amazon delivered a laptop to my house that I never ordered, the address wasn’t even slightly similar and I have no idea why they dropped it on my front step. I reported it to them and they said the same.. just throw it out. Local law says I have to attempt to return to sender so I called again and double checked if they want me to do so, and that second support person said the same bit more openly said “throw it away, or do whatever you like with it, but you definitely don’t need to send it back”. I was pretty shocked that they don’t even care about items of that high a value. My kid loved her new laptop though.

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> Amazon delivered a laptop to my house that I never ordered

Common scam here in Blighty where a "courier" later turns up to collect the laptop from you.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49450485

Not this case... the address was wrong.

We got a few packages ($10-$50 each in value) delivered to us over the span of a couple of months. Not ordered by us.

Addresses were mailed out to: Jane Smith (my fiance) 1234 Our Apartment St, but lacking an apt#, yet they were still delivered to us at the front desk.

I check my credit card statements later and start seeing some unauthorized charges from Amazon. My card was not linked to my fiance's account. No idea what really happened here so I had to call the CC company to alert of fraud and cancel my card.

hold it, don't you need to authorise those payments via a OneTimePassword (OTP? if a CC company can take your money without your authorization, then it is a very good way to scam people

In India, all such Credit Card purchase needs to be validated via OTP and PIN. Passwordless purchase is only possible for some cards and they require physical access to PoS machine and low purchase amount to work.

With a credit card linked to an Amazon account there doesn't seem to be a need to acknowledge the transaction. It's weird, but it seems to work. I have no idea why Amazon gets to do that but every other store out there can't.

I don't know about the US, but here in the Netherlands I only get an OTP check once every 10 online cc purchases or so. The bank debit card gets an OTP check every time though.

ive heard a few stories of people getting high value (>$1k) shipped and nobody wanting it returned,. I dont get why there is not an exception policy for high value items. Im assuming these kind of "dont ship it back" policies are due to them not wanting to have to support a return infastructure. but if there is a steady supply of high value item returns/mis-shipments I would think it would be worth it. I think i remember reading that its US law that if something is delivered to you, its yours. maybe they dont wanna mess with that?

I guess I would would love to know why they dont want it back

Given the sheer number of products they ship, yes, they don't and can't reasonably support returns for most things. It's one thing if you're returning a pair of pants that didn't fit. It's quite another if you're returning a laptop. The former you can more or less look over, verify it's still good merchandise, and restock it. The latter... is kinda asking a lot of their warehouse personnel.

Also, it helps to remember that many products are simply 'fulfilled by Amazon', not something Amazon stocks in itself. Thus, returns can incur additional restocking costs from having to reroute that product to the appropriate warehouse.

Thus, it makes sense that for some products that they just cannot reasonably verify the resellability of, or for products that are just plain too low margin to bother with, it makes sense to just tell people to 'keep it'.

That said, there's nothing to stop them from at least having the courtesy to call up the DSP that made the mistake, make them pick it up, and have them dispose of it. Make THEM bear the cost.

Hope that helps.

> cannot reasonably verify the resellability

The merchant should always be able to verify that, be it for pants or complex electronics. Verifying a laptop hasn't been tampered with and reinstalling the OEM OS is easy.

> products that are just plain too low margin to bother with

The margin is irrelevant, the cost is what matters. Throwing away an item that cost 300k to make costs 300k, no matter if the margin is 10$ or 100k$.

It can’t have been of that high a value. Amazon sends the really expensive stuff via UPS, with a signature and ID required.

I'm not sure what counts as "really expensive", but I ordered a $1k laptop via amazon and it was shipped with FedEx, no siganture required. (2-3 years ago, southeast US)

It’s a few thousands of USD. I don’t know what or even if there’s a magic cut off. But there’s some point where they seemingly no longer trust minimum wage subcontractors. Or perhaps it varies by locale… Even the Whole Foods security guards are armed where I live.

> Even the Whole Foods security guards are armed where I live

I don't remember ever having seen _any_ security guards in a grocery store before, let alone armed ones! It's possible I've mistaken some for regular employees if they wore the same uniform, but I'm fairly certain I would have noticed if they were carrying weapons...

Local grocers here (UK) have security guards (not armed!) I once saw one chasing a shoplifter; the shoplifter ran faster. But most of the time they're just standing around, diddling their mobile device.

I don't think their purpose is to deter shoplifters; it's really to deter assaults on staff. Shoplifting is just part of the cost of doing business as a grocers.

I once saw a couple of armed cops in my local grocers; UK cops are generally not armed, but these guys were carrying big old pistols as they wandered through the aisles looking for sandwiches. I'm not keen on sharing supermarket aisles with gunmen, even if they're in uniform; so I complained. Armed cops should disarm (e.g. leave their guns in the cop-car) if all they're doing is shopping for lunch. I was treated with scorn.

UK also. I reported a minor crime and had armed plod turn up on my doorstep as they were "in the area".

I rather politely told them to fuck off. (We can do without militarisation of our police service thankyou.)

I live in an EU inner city. Most of our grocery stores are quite small, so it's usually like one cashier, one person stacking shelves, and maybe extra people at peak hours to handle deliveries or open a second checkout. A security guard would definitely be out of their budget. For americans, think like a double size 7-11.

Larger stores in the suburbs definitely do, and my understanding is something like whole foods would be similarly sized to those.

I think it depends on the seller, I've had to sign for $20 items but not ones that cost a few hundred.

I've bought stacks of laptops from them during the pandemic when some things were difficult to buy. $15k worth of laptops left on the stoop. This happened multiple times.

I'm sure Amazon knows theft rate by zip code.

They do. That sort of thing is tracked internally. There are some neighborhoods we know to not leave things laying around because they'll get stolen. OTOH, in most any suburban environment as long as its out of sight from the street and is protected from the elements, then it's considered to be in a secure location. If you're getting packages stolen then honestly the best solution is to have them delivered to an Amazon locker near you. That might not be convenient, but you'll definitely get your stuff.

Meanwhile I ordered a $20 speaker cable that was factory defective and decided it was better to eat the loss than risk doing a return. I know every return you do with Amazon is a Black mark on your record. Unfortunately they bought out Audible, I have a library there I've been building over fifteen years. If I get banned by Amazon I lose all my audiobooks as well as paid music and movies on Amazon itself. I've eaten a bunch of losses actually due to this threat.

Unless you're retuning multiple things a month every month this probably isn't a realistic fear but, I guess you never know with these big corporate automated systems.

Do you have any information on this record that Amazon keeps? Is there a risk of getting banned after a certain number of returns?

So the problem is that Amazon is extremely non-transparent about the policy and what the triggers are, so you will never see it coming. This is exactly why it causes me so much anxiety, I've heard that if you have bad luck with one high value laptop being defective or God forbid being stolen off your porch, that can do you in. So I want to save all my social credit for actual nightmare scenarios like that rather than waste it on returning defective Chinese cables and trinkets. I also avoid buying high risk items off Amazon now. (Products I know from personal experience have a higher than 1 in 1000 defect rate.)

https://bestlifeonline.com/banned-from-amazon/

Why not just stop ordering there?

Do you mean to punish them because of what I dislike or mainly to protect my media collection? Just so I can reply accordingly...

I've gotten laptops shipped that supposedly had a signature required, but they ended up leaving it at the door anyway. Then the signature on the order shows a misspelled version of my name. I guess it just doesn't matter to them.

I have never (hundreds, maybe even 1000+ deliveries) had to sign for an Amazon purchase. The only thing I can recall signing for, from any vendor, in the past 10 years was my wine club shipments and that's only been 50/50 since Covid.

I have $300 purchases that I had to read a 6-digit character to the amazon driver, the driver enter it in their device, and then release for shipment.

Damn all I got were aquarium supplies and plus size clothing.

It isn't just Amazon. About a month ago, FedEx delivered several unexpected packages to my house. It was the right street but not even the same number of digits in the house number, so not close to being a honest mistake.

The intended recipient called the cops and FedEx tracked it down. It turned out to be several packages of gift cards, which is super sketchy, but other than a confusing experience with the police, I guess it turned out ok for everyone except maybe the driver.

- I would be afraid, if I use it, to be “caught with stolen goods.”

- Can they deliver a written notice that we can use it?

Try to have the delivery company take it to the correct address? Unless amzn was the delivery company. Call the recipient? Keeping it sounds like it should be lower on the list.

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