Shoes of all kinds have arrived at a B.C. woman’s home in the past two months. The problem is she didn’t order any of them.
Anca Nitu, a resident of Langley, B.C., has received 50 Amazon packages containing an authorized return slip with her address. The deliveries are associated with an inactive Amazon account under her name.
Couriers leave the packages at her door, denying Nitu the opportunity to refuse them, she told CBC.
The packages have also put her on the hook for $300 in charges for Collect-on-Delivery (COD) through UPS.
“I start shaking when I see packages at my door,” Nitu told the publication. “They keep coming and it just doesn’t end.” Nitu believes sellers are using the address to get rid of unwanted items.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) told the CBC the ordeal sounds like a vendor-return scheme.
Amazon offers fulfillment services to third parties, requiring them to pay for packing orders, shipping, and handling. However, under the scheme, sellers might use a private address to have returns sent to, avoiding the higher cost of shipping packages to their proper address. Under Amazon’s fulfillment services website, it charges sellers for the removal and disposal of items that can’t be resold.
“It’s easier and cheaper for the sellers to have [returned products] sent to this random address than having it sent to China [or other countries overseas],” Neesha Hothi, the director of marketing and communications at the BBB in B.C., told the publication.
“It could be that the warehouse has asked the seller to remove their unsold products from fulfilment centres, or their contract is ending.”
Nitu has sought assistance from Amazon and UPS, but neither has led to any success. She also filed a police report and was told to dispose of the packages.
Amazon told the CBC they have “addressed” the issue, but Nitu said that’s far from the case.
“I don’t know what Amazon is allowing them to do because they got a hold of my name, my address and my old phone number,” Nitu told the CBC.
Source: CBC
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
