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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

Is this just a mistake (the person responsible for picking and labeling got the wrong box) or did wharehouse workerw figure out how to steal items somehow?

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I once ordered a cheap, light piece of furniture from amazon.

Instead, I received a full length mirror weighing about 60+lb, normally sold for about $200. It was clearly in the correct box, but had the wrong shipping label on it. Seems unlikely to be caused by theft.

Unfortunately it was a huge hassle to deal with -- I didn't want the item, didn't have the strength to be able to easily move it around myself, and Amazon's return policy simply didn't acknowledge the possibility that I was sent the wrong package!

I ended up simply leaving it by the trash.

I imagine it’s all third party sellers not Amazon warehouses.

Does anybody know how this happens?

Comingled inventory from 3rd party sellers "Fulfilled by Amazon" and returns that look like they were never opened, and are thus re-sold.

The returns thing doesn't fly. No one in amazon is taking sealed shipping boxes and putting a new label on them, assuming that the item is inside.

No, but if you have the facility to apply new shrink wrap so it looks factory sealed, Amazon aren’t going to x-ray it to check what’s inside.

Hm, that's an interesting fraud vector. Presumably it applies to pretty much any retailer though? And doesn't apply to items with tamper-proof factory seals that are hard to counterfeit.

You only have to counterfeit it to the standard of Amazon's returned-items check though, not to the OEM's standard.

It's something I've heard of for years.

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