Loved that. This quote just sums up customer support in 2020 (and, apparently, also in 2014):

    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!'

I wish I could get such to the point responses (as simple as "No") while interacting with customer care.

Thank you very much for commenting, and I'm sorry to hear about your concern, 'balladeer. I empathize with your desire for short, pithy responses to questions posed to customer care, and hope that you're having an otherwise great day. Thank you for being a loyal HN customer.

Can I get your account number to get started?

Amazon accidentally shipped me a book a few months ago, by getting one digit in the address wrong. I pinged Amazon to return it - but I got the same response, "why don't you keep it?". I said I didn't want to, and this went on for a while, and I realized that they aren't going to to take it back. They said they were going to ship another copy to the correct address anyway. A day after the conversation, I was still not satisfied so I decided to walk down to this other house to drop off the book. Unfortunately no one was in when I made my visit, and I didn't want to drop off the book without speaking to them (it'd have been confusing if they had received some kind of an apology mail from Amazon in the interim etc). I had to immediately leave for a long business trip right after, and, well, the book is still with me. I didn't bother after my return - I convinced myself it was too late.

But mine was a book, yours was a beam. So I got off easy I guess :-)

My best/worse "duplicates" have arisen since they started using their own last-mile shipping:

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.

Amazon has changed promised delivery dates after I ordered items. They are comitting fraud, and I too have taken screenshots to call them out on it in case it becomes an issue.

Why borther don't they just throw returns in the trash anyways?

But giving an incorrectly addressed package to your neighbor seems like a general good idea :)

No, they auction off returns in mixed boxes. Here's a video of someone who bought one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTaYet07Ioo

I realize that HN frowns on +1 types of comments. But I nevertheless feel obliged to add that I laughed my ass off watching that video. The woman that did the video has a great sense of humor.

No, as I understand it they sell job lots of returns on a pallet or whatever, by weight or volume I'm not sure. More valuable/branded stuff is sold for what it is though, and direct to consumer, in the 'Amazon Warehouse' section - at least, iirc it advertises itself as products returned or damaged in the warehouse.

I've received duplicate items some times, like when I report something not received and they send me a replacement that arrives the same time as the original missing item.

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.

The horrible thing is that the seller has to eat the cost.

If you're trying to prevent waste just sell it to your local used book store.

I ordered a mattress off of amazon. 2 days later, I get the money back on my account. Not wanting mto be banned from amazon, and thinking maybe the payment bounced on my account, I called customer support.

"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.

At some point it's cheaper (and better PR) just to let people keep the money and product.

Handling the refund costs hours of work and might end up being more expensive than the return/refund.

The "Update 3" made my day, thanks for posting that.

>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.

It was not until I read through the whole article and saw the picture that, finally, my mind was at rest knowing that someone didn't order a 12-foot long balance beam to try to somehow put into their roof.

There’s actually laws regarding stuff sent to you in error. Basically, they can’t ask you to return it unless you offer. Hence why there’s probably no formalized process for it.

It should also not come as a surprise that a company whose process is highly optimised to move product in one direction has problems dealing with unusual situations in the other direction.

This article is also from 2014. I wonder if the return process is smoother now.

normal returns are pretty painless - I order thing, I get exactly that thing, I return thing.

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 had a similar experience with a hairdryer (I am bald). They refunded the cost of the item I actually ordered (not a hairdryer)(I am bald). They offered that I keep the hairdryer (still bald). They were insanely against picking it up/returning it.

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!!!

Returns are super painless now. You just click a few times on a webpage and then go to your local UPS store (or whatever you picked) show them your phone so they can scan the QR code you got sent, and then hand them the item.

Returns of things they know they sent are painless. In the linked article there was no tracking showing the balance beam and that caused most of the problem.

They bought Zappos which had always been good with returns.

This comment seems to be the mail order equivalent of the "they can't legally make you stay after the bell rings in class" kid at school.

There are laws in the UK because of a historical scam, where a company mails you something you didn't order, then - perhaps months later - bills you for it at a ridiculous price.

You know, mail out $20 sets of headphones with no return address, then bill people $500 a few months later.

Yeah, it's the same reasoning for these laws here in the US.

This is not accurate. If the company intentionally sends you an item that you did not request, it's a gift and they can't demand it back. If they send you an item in error it's not a gift and you are not entitled to keep it for free.

This is not correct, at least in the US. You can keep it even if you didn't order it, regardless of whether or not it was sent in error.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...

Your link doesn't refute what I said. It's talking entirely about the case where companies intentionally send you unordered merchandise and does not address the case where companies sent it to you in error.

Nothing on that page is conditional on the sender's intentions. And the relevant law is pretty straightforward: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/3009

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. Which is to say, "unordered merchandise" doesn't mean "merchandise ordered by someone else", it doesn't mean "merchandise mistakenly believed to have been ordered but wasn't really", and it doesn't mean "merchandise miscategorized by the seller and sent in place of the actual ordered merchandise".

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.

You're making shit up.

> 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.

> All such merchandise shall have attached to it a clear and conspicuous statement informing the recipient that he may treat the merchandise as a gift to him [...].

That part make this kind of confusing. If it doesn't, then can it still be considered a gift?

No, its still a gift, its just in violation. Still yours to keep.

What's going on here?

> 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?

Generally speaking, government agencies have to "stand behind" these kinds of official statements, so yes.

That's what I'm saying, though. An official statement of the FTC should look like "You do not have to pay for merchandise you didn't order". It definitely shouldn't look like "According to the FTC, you don't have to pay for merchandise you didn't order". That language is only appropriate for a party other than the FTC itself.

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?

Seems like there should be laws about being able to make them come pick shit up too.

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."

Agreed.

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.

Amazon is normally happy to do this for a return -- they'll send UPS to pick it up. But in this case, since she didn't order it, it was hard to get a correct shipping label. (which normally probably wouldn't matter -- if UPS has a shipping later for a 1 pound package of coffee and you hand them a box of shoes, the UPS driver isn't likely to know or care.

But for something as large as a balance beam it's more of a problem.

My point is essentially that it should never be a problem for the accidental recipient and that we should judge them harshly for the cases where it is.

(I don't mean they should never make a mistake, I mean they should have a robust process for dealing with the mistakes)

Amazon didn't want it back, they said she could keep it, but she didn't want it and didn't want to dispose of it:

“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”

> Basically, they can’t ask you to return it unless you offer.

They certainly can ask.