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Comment by stephencoyner | Hacker News Reader

My parents had the exact same issue. They kept getting packages meant for a random person they didn't know, but addressed to their home. Lots of cheap, random products like $20 massage guns.

They contacted Amazon and they said "nothing we can do, enjoy the stuff." Pretty odd that they can't even message the person and tell them what's happening. It all ended up in the trash or given away.

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What happened is that Amazon charges sellers storage fees for their products not selling. Some sellers have no ability to take the products back to store them themselves, e.g. the products were sent directly from the factories to Amazon warehouse. When the storage fees become excessive, sellers just start to ship the products to random people to get rid of them.

They also need an address for fake reviews that are left by ‘people who bought this product’.

If sellers are shipping to random people, are then registering a sale through Amazon? Seems like Amazon wouldn’t want to be warehousing products for that don’t sell for free, an I missing something?

"Nothing we can do, enjoy disposing of mountains of garbage at your own expense!"

I'm sure Amazon (or the scummy vendor) could open a waitlist for people who want to receive free random stuff for a week, and they could find plenty of volunteers. I'm also sure this also would be against some Amazon policy that supposedly prevents fraud, but just produces waste as a sideproduct of fraud.

Yes, they could, and they'd have people lined up around the block to sign up.

But that's vastly different from just dumping a bunch of garbage on someone's porch.

Isn't it was Amazon Vine pretty much is?

You jest, but this would actually solve the problem. Sellers get rid of junk, and other users get reviews about that junk. Something like a lower tier Amazon Vine.

You could always just wait till you have a vanload full of amazon leavings, and then dump it at the customer service desk of your local whole foods on a Saturday afternoon...

Find the nearest Amazon depot, scribble “To: Amazon” on the boxes and throw over the fence.

> enjoy the stuf

This is abandoned property. In some states you can charge storage fees for abandoned property.

This is a different scam, called brushing, as mentioned in TFA.

https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam

The core difference in this story is that the victim was then contacted by UPS Canada to pay the duties for all of the stuff she was sent.

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