I originally parsed this as "[B.C Woman = Woman from Before Christ] [buried = laid to rest] in [Amazon = rainforest].....packages she did not ask for" and REALLY had to re-read it carefully.
It's a garden-path sentence [1]. Garden-path sentences have ambiguous parses that typically require backtracking to correct earlier misinterpretations.
Well, the words "B.C." and "buried" are interpreted correctly in a grammatical sense either way. "Paris man with baguette" might be misleading if they're in Texas, but that's outside the scope of garden path sentences.
Only "Amazon packages" falls into the right realm. But is that enough to qualify as a garden path sentence? Personally, I wouldn't say so.
It definitely is. Because you think Amazon is a place, a noun, and thus you think "packages" is a verb - the woman is packaging something. Then you realize Amazon is a brand adjective. Definitely garden path.
I mean, not to be argumentative, but your personal opinion doesn't change the definition of the term. The first example on Wikipedia's article on it is "the old man the boat." Again, that's only one word, but it turns out there isn't a minimum word-backtracking-count to qualify.
In the particular case of headlines, where this arises more often thanks to their need for brevity at the cost of clarity, linguists sometimes call these "Crash blossoms" from the naming example "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms".
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I think it's not a garden-path sentence because the sentence would be grammatically correct in the prehistoric/rainforest parse and even make some sort of sense.
Of course the meaning would be extremely weird - why would a prehistoric woman be buried with grave goods she refused and how would we even be able to know? - but I've honestly on par with the headlines and articles often posted here.
Same. I sometimes wonder if in these cases it's a cultural/not-intended-audience thing (USA brain vs CAD brain top-1 expansion of B.C.), or objectively bad writing, or intentional.
Probably a cultural thing. As a resident of B.C I parsed that bit intuitively, but the "buried in" bit seemed like some sort of literal warehouse mishap, because we do have at least 1 fulfillment center here. I wouldn't expect anyone outside of the Pacific Northwest or Canada to read it as British Columbia.
> I wouldn't expect anyone outside of the Pacific Northwest or Canada to read it as British Columbia.
I’ve lived in Australia my whole life, never been to Canada, etc - and yet I immediately assumed “B.C” meant “British Columbia”. It just seemed like the most likely expansion in the context (looks like a news headline, posted on a North American website). Although a bit like you, my initial parse of the sentence was that she was crushed to death in a warehouse accident, it took me a couple of seconds to realise it was more likely meant figuratively
> Australia and B.C do have somewhat of a kinship though
It is true that Australians and Canadians find themselves to have certain things in common, both being former dominions of the British Empire – but that doesn't mean that Canadian provinces have particularly strong salience for Australians.
Australians consume a lot more American media than Canadian media; and the US is a significantly more popular travel destination. I have a much better idea of the difference between New York and Florida than the difference between British Columbia and Ontario – I've been to both New York and Florida, as I said I still haven't got around to visiting Canada; even before I'd ever been to either, I'd watched countless TV shows and movies set in both, and that gave me a certain image of both in my head (and actually experiencing them in person wasn't hugely different from my pre-existing mental image). I think of Canadian provinces, and my mental images are a lot vaguer. I think that's generally true – the average Australian, if their idea of US geography is somewhat patchy, their idea of Canadian geography is likely to be a lot patchier.
I think he’s being more specific about the kinship between aussies and those in the lower mainland. I live in Vancouver, and I know exactly what this guys talking about when it comes to Aussies— drive up to Whistler (a nearby ski/snowboard/party town in the mountains) and you’ll be amazed at how many Australian accents you hear. It’s like Little Melbourne up there, my brother used to work the bars/restaurant scene up there, more than half of his coworkers at multiple jobs he had up there were aussies.
I don’t expect that Australians hold a bond with Canada at large, I can’t very well imagine any of the Aussies I’ve met having a fond place in their hearts for Calgary or even the rest of Canada (read: Toronto, Montreal).
I find it totally believable there are lots of Australians in some parts of BC. I just can't remember hearing it before.
Now I think about it, years ago, I did hear something about Australians working in the Canadian ski industry, and I suppose that probably was in BC. But I've never really been into skiing, so the information didn't make much of an impression on me. So I doubt that's got anything to do with my immediate understanding of "B.C. woman..." as being a reference to British Columbia.
Also, one of my aunts (by marriage) is Canadian, and if I remember right she grew up in BC. But I've never been particularly close to her, and I haven't seen or spoken to her in years. So I'm sceptical that has anything to do with it either.
jknutson was right about what I meant by kinship, in that there's relatively strong concentration of Aussies who come here for the mountains, presumably as sort of a right of a passage and end up staying if they can (easy PR I think), but also that B.C people tend to want to visit Australia for no other reason than it seems like a bit of a different world and most of us probably know some Aussies, but also don't tend to digest much if any Aussie media. I'd expect the desire to come here is the result more of word of mouth than advertising, but that's just a hunch.
Yes, exactly, though I did appreciate their elaboration on the sort of media Australians at-large are exposed to.
I'd say also that B.C people are fairly likely to want to pursue visiting Australia, despite not really digesting any substantial amount of Aussie media.
I am not a native speaker (French) and was taught British English at school. This came with sentences where the order of words was very different from French.
We had stuff like "this is the thing you have been looking for", with the sentence ending with "for".
This forced us to parse sentences with great care to understand them and we were usually fine only after the final word. Same with Latin.
This is to say that this title was surprisingly clear to me immediately after the first reading :)
(if a French is reading this - that was in the times when we were looking for Brian who was in the kitchen, and Jenny who was elsewhere but I do not remember where. They also had a cat)
This might be a bit more specific to those working in the industry, but I remember seeing an article here whose title started with "Amazon Rainforest" and thought it was another AWS offering before reading the rest of it.
The customs charges bit is interesting because I don't really understand where they (as in UPS) stand on this.
I'm sure they're adding their own 'convenience' fee on top of the actual VAT or whatever they are collecting for the government too - but they don't have a contract with her to do this, so why do they expect her to pay it? The sender is the one who has contracted and paid UPS to deliver the parcel, but if this lady wants nothing to do with it - what are they trying to bill her for?
I understand they have paid the government tax on her behalf, but she didn't ask for them to do so. Surely by this logic, anyone in the world could bankrupt anyone else in any country other than their own by mailing a brick that they declare to be worth millions to the unlucky recipient?
As someone who lives in Canada. You don’t have to pay in this circumstance as far as I can tell. This happened to me with UPS and they sent me to a collection agency who I then asked for proof of the debt. Haven’t heard a peep since. I think if it happens enough, UPS will require prepayment for future packages. You can also refuse delivery.
The real scam is the brokerage fees that they tack on to the taxes. For an item worth $40 cad you will end up paying about $20 in brokerage fees on top of taxes for ground packages. The only way to avoid it is to know that the package is coming and clear it yourself before it arrives, which can only be done in person if you aren’t a broker.
I haven't lived in Canada for a while, but what typically happened to me when living in Canada and ordering things from the US from private sellers or small companies was:
1. I chose the cheapest shipping option and would be hit by "customs fees" which was actually reasonable taxes or even no taxes for a small item, but with a brokerage fee added upon delivery. Small text was added to the invoice to make it plausibly seem like all fees were taxes to be blamed on the government, not on UPS or Fedex.
2. After realizing what brokerage fees were and doing research, I chose shipping which was a bit more expensive but included the paperwork and fees.
3. I would get hit with brokerage fees anyway because ebay shippers and small companies unilaterally changed shipping to the cheaper option for their own benefit to pocket the difference or for a perceived benefit to me.
4. As an added bonus, sometimes a private seller helpfully shipped without an invoice for the goods, or even put and inflated value in the shipping documents "just in case for insurance" and I would get hit with tax on the inflated value.
People using ebay or online shopping a lot back then (approx 2000-2012) would figure things out and know the blame was with sellers, UPS and Fedex. But I remember for years people around me placing the blame only on the Canadian government.
That used to happen a lot, so much I started refusing packages that arrived with a different vector than the one I selected. It's annoying because almost every e-commerce on earth didn't track in the order shipping options, but on the other hand you don't need to wait for shipment you can already work out for the tracking number if there's something wonky and cancel from there.
> You don’t have to pay in this circumstance as far as I can tell.
If you accept the package in a way where they pay the import taxes for you (you are not paying the government directly, they pay first then you pay them), it does indeed become your problem. They conducted a service on your behalf, with the expectation that you will compensate them, and the brokerage fees represent their labour in paying for you. Once or twice not paying those brokerage fees you could probably get away with, but eventually they’ll hold packages back until you have paid off all arrears + interest and penalties.
There is another way available to a small majority of Canadians:
If you live near a border crossing or international airport or harbour that regularly docks international ships, you will have a Canadian Border Services (CBS) office near you. This means you can self-clear any package, thereby avoiding brokerage fees.
The method is thus:
1. Refuse to accept the package from the shipper, tell them to hold it at the local distribution centre where you will pick it up later as you want to self-clear it personally. Ask for the Bill of Lading (BoL), which is a piece of paper attached to the package that defines the shipper, receiver, and contents of the package (usually itemized and $-valued). Some shippers call it something different, with other shippers you need to fill out an online form to be sent this document.
2. Within 24-48 hrs (2 work days), go to your local CBS office with your BoL, and if the BoL does not specify the value of the goods (preferably itemized), include any receipts or invoices you saved from the purchase. The CBS officers will calculate import taxes from those amounts and provide you with a BoL-linked invoice for that payment that includes all shipping numbers.
3. Provide to the shipping company the CBS form indicating that you have paid the import taxes directly to the government. This means that the shipping company will be reimbursed for its tax payment on that shipment, nullifying your obligation to pay the brokerage fees. Some (UPS) will demand that it be faxed in to a head office number (yes, even in 2023). Ask nicely, and the CBS officers may do it for you. Other shipping companies (FedEx) only need to see it when you pick up the package, as they’ll scan it into their records at that time.
Presto, no brokerage fees paid!
Good luck. And my condolences to anyone without a CBS office within easy travel distance.
> If you accept the package in a way where they pay the import taxes for you (you are not paying the government directly, they pay first then you pay them), it does indeed become your problem. They conducted a service on your behalf, with the expectation that you will compensate them, and the brokerage fees represent their labour in paying for you.
What happens is they drop a package on your porch without giving you a chance to refuse the package and clear it yourself. They have to give you that opportunity by law.
It would be similar to showing up at your house, cleaning your windows and then sending you bill. You never asked for that service, in the case of UPS you never agreed for them to act as your broker to clear your package.
I have never had a shipping company pay import taxes and then just drop the package off. They have always rung the doorbell to get me to accept it in person, or if I was not at home, tried delivery again another day. They come up to the door with credit card reader in hand, expecting you to make payment then and there, and will not give you the package if you don’t pay.
The exception is if CBS takes a long time to determine actual value, and therefore, taxes. Usually on used items with unclear but significant value. It’s happened a handful of times that they made delivery with no notice of brokerage fees or import taxes. Then, suddenly a few weeks to a month later, I got an invoice in the mail: they had paid the import taxes for me after delivery due to a delayed judgement by CBS, and so I was on the hook for both those taxes and brokerage fees. I still went to CBS with my BoL and paid the taxes directly to the government in order to avoid those brokerage fees.
> It would be similar to showing up at your house, cleaning your windows and then sending you bill. You never asked for that service, in the case of UPS you never agreed for them to act as your broker to clear your package.
But you did agree, by choosing them as a shipper. Certain fees can be implied as required in order to complete the transaction. In order to get your package across the border, the shipper needs to do what is necessary to get the package in your hands. Dealing with CBS and paying import taxes is the step needed to keep the package moving. If they waited for everyone to pay on their own then there would be billions of packages stuck at border warehouses, gumming up the works.
Read the article. This lady is receiving dozens of packages despite a note refusing delivery.
I have also received packages that were left behind when I wasn’t home. I received an invoice later and told them to show me where I accepted the package. Didn’t hear about it again.
> But you did agree, by choosing them as a shipper.
The contracts are between the seller and the shipping company, and between the buyer and the seller. There's no contract between the buyer and the shipping company. And in this case where parcels are being randomly sent to an address un-asked-for, that is most definitely the case.
In addition to what others have said, they are required by law to allow you to clear the package yourself, even if that means they need to keep the package on hold for days. Choosing UPS as a brokerage to handle this for you is a separate contract from the shipping itself, that is between the sender and UPS.
> even if that means they need to keep the package on hold for days.
Yes, but this would be at the final distribution points immediately prior to delivery, not at border warehouses right smack in the middle of the transport chain.
Local distribution points will only ever have a limited number of packages waiting to get picked up, even if a lot of people decide to self-clear; THAT volume is manageable. Border warehouses would end up with millions gumming up the works and getting in the way. That ISN’T manageable. Having things pile up at major transport nodes is a recipe for failure and system collapse.
> which can only be done in person if you aren’t a broker
And IIRC there are something less than a couple dozen in-person locations nationwide where you can do so. Many people live hundreds of KMs from the nearest office. It’s infuriating - all you’re doing is filing some paperwork and giving a credit card payment. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done online.
> there are something less than a couple dozen in-person locations nationwide
About ⅔ of Canadians live within 2hrs drive of a Canadian Border Services office. This drops to about 56% of all Canadians if you limit it to a one-hour drive.
And there are a recorded 1,200 such manned offices across Canada. Not all of them handle self-clearing, mind you, as some are special-purpose offices that are not accessible to the public at large. But the vast majority do.
These CBS offices can be found at any border crossing, international airport, and harbour that has regularly-scheduled dockings of international ships, even cargo ships. There are 117 land border offices, 43 airport offices, and 393 marine offices in Canada alone.
A four or even two hour round trip does not seem like a reasonable ask, especially given that this is a form that could easily be completed online. I don't have to drive hours to file my taxes.
> And there are a recorded 1,200 such manned offices across Canada. Not all of them handle self-clearing, mind you...
I was under the impression that self clearing specifically required an inland office, of which there are 50 across the country. I'm not alone in this - google "how to self clear goods Canada" and you'll get all sorts of advice saying you need very specific types of CBSA offices. I would also highlight that none of this is made particularly clear on the CBSA website - there's no page on "how to clear your goods" that I was able to find.
Customs charges are an interesting thing. I had some stuff sent from Amazon US to myself in Finland back in the early 2000s. The package didn't arrive, they sent me another. That one showed up. About a month later, I got a notification from customs wanting duty on the original package. It wasn't much, I ended up with 2x of the items. Called Amazon, told them what was up, and they said just keep it. (Amazon customer service was much different back then).
In another instance, I bought an expensive item off EBay from Italy. It was sent, forms had to be filed with FedEx for import, etc. A few month later the Franchise Tax Board in California was all - "hey we want our cut (use tax)". It took a bit of time to track down, but I finally got a hold of a person and pointed out that the purchase was off ebay and sales tax was paid. I had to send the proof so of such. At this point they had already assessed penalties. With the proof it all went away, but the government does want their cut.=
I assume in the latter case the item was coming from Italy to you in California, not from Italy to you in Finland? If it was the latter case that would make for a truly bizarre story.
By "this" do you mean if someone is trying to discover this my "return probing"? I.e. opening return requests after every single purchase in the hopes of getting this response?
I can believe that, but I wasn't doing that, I keep most things I buy. I just happened to get this response for an item the other day.
FWIW it was a 7 Euro 2 meter long gas hose, the kind you use for a propane tank when camping.
I assume the restocking logistics didn't work out for whatever reason.
On second thought maybe they've got some hidden policies when it comes to certain products categories. The potential liability of reselling a gas-related product in this price range may not be worth it.
By “this” I mean refund without return. You can only have so many on your apparently, no matter the reason, before you’re flagged for (seemingly) ever.
> The potential liability of reselling a gas-related product in this price range may not be worth it.
Maybe. But it’s amazon we’re talking about, they might not care.
In the brick scenario, lets assume I am the brick sender and you are the recipient.
You would get a bill, and if you received the package, you could prove that it was a brick, and you didn’t order it, and thus the customs declaration form signed by me was fraudulent and you would not be liable to pay the duties.
If the duties were particularly high (enough to bankrupt you) it would be held at the nearest port agreed upon, and you be notified to come pay the duties before it’s delivered. Again thats where you would be able to show it wasn’t an item you wanted. Or you could refuse it all together and it would be up to be me to pay to get it back.
If this were a bigger problem the freight carrier would work to identify me and bring charges of committing various fraud.
As an aside shipping goods DAP (vs DDP) is risky for this reason—if buyers aren’t made aware if additional shipping costs at time of delivery they may refuse to pay in which case the seller is responsible for paying to get their item back, including additional storage fees.
You don't really need to (although as another sibling commenter wrote, you might need a sworn statement or affidavit just establishing that you are claiming not to have ordered the thing). You just need the other party not to be able to prove the contrary. The burden of proof is on them. (IANAL)
Something like that actually happened to me: FedEx will not listen to you, not care, not even give you a way to raise such a request. If you persist in not paying, this will be sent to debt collection. If you persist in not paying, your credit score will be affected.
There is simply no part of FedEx customer service that would deal with it, or if there is, it's well hidden. Yes you could probably go to court over this, but this is almost certainly not worth the time and money.
Source: spent countless hours dealing with this problem in 2023.
False dichotomy. Don’t use customer service; nor “go to court.” Just send them a legal Cease and Desist letter re: their making of fraudulent charges against you.
The real “customer service” department of any corporation is their legal department. Someone will personally look into your case in response to a legal notice, I promise you. And, in the process of determining whether your claim has standing, they’ll ask the people who can actually address it — and boom, your problem will go away.
The whole thing is weird to me. I would have assumed that COD would require a signature from the recipient as an agreement to accept the charges. It's bizarre that UPS either thinks they can or actually can just drop packages off and presume the recipient agrees to the charges.
I have my own tale to tell here. A couple years ago, someone got hold of my credit card info and used it to order some expensive clothing from an online store in Italy. If I recall correctly, it was about 1800 euros. It was actually the bank that alerted me, as this was a complete break with my purchase habits. Anyway, I canceled the card, disputed the charges, and got the money back.
Several months later I got a letter in the (paper) mail from DHL regarding an unpaid bill for VAT that they had paid on a package I had received from them. Long story short, it turns out the thieves had got the expensive clothes shipped to an address about 500 km from where I live, with my name on it (I live in Norway, BTW). DHL had paid the VAT and delivered the package to “me” somehow. I disputed this, of course, and told them about the credit card issue. After a bit of back and forth, they told me I had to file a police report. I did so, sent them a copy, and they finally relented and did not pursue the issue further. But they also informed me that in the future, if a package came to me, I would have to pay the VAT/customs ahead of receiving the package. Which is fine with me.
This is something I also don't understand. I'm in Switzerland, which is small, so we order a lot from outside the country. All of the bg courier services add a delivery fee - but the seller already paid for shipping? There are a few services (Border Free comes to mind) that work, but otherwise we try to get shipping by the postal system. Germany, of course, has literally outsourced their postal system to DHL :-(
Yes this is something that infuriated me too. Especially that the “paper pushing fee” is often more than the actual VAT due, and I live 5 min away from the federal customs office.
But I checked all I could and in Switzerland you’re not allowed to take the option of clearing the package yourself and so have to pay the courier’s racket.
The beauty of it is that how expensive the fee is depends on the level of service the sender picked, and you don’t even know how much the fee will be because they drop the parcel off and send you a bill a couple weeks later.
I never order abroad anymore and when I’m forced to, I only do it if they’ll ship through the regular post office as Swiss post is the least predatory in their “handling fees”… but like everything in CH: caveat emptor.
But you don’t have to pay import duties and VAT if you buy from EU countries?
e.g. these day if I order anything from the UK (to an EU country) the package gets stuck in customs and I have to pay VAT(20%) + Import duty (optional depending on product type/value) + random service fee.
Custom charges sound weird. But I take they are not held by customs under chargers are paid like they do here. And at that point she could refuse or point out they are not hers and they would eventually destroy them.
I tried to return some clothing purchased on Ebay that was supposed to be equivalent of a Men's XL but was child-sized. The seller strung me along and the return address was random parts of Canadian locales strung together, like "Toronto, New Brunswick" with a postal code in BC. eBay kept saying "you have to use the return address" while the seller kept offering small but increasing refunds if I'd cancel my compaint (yeah sure).
It took weeks but I eventually got all my money back. It was obvious this was an overseas seller who never intended to accept returns, but eBay obviously didn't care.
- Open a "not as described" case against the seller
- When they say you should return it, ask them for a prepaid label to do the return, which is your right, never pay to return it yourself, especially if they claim they will refund your costs (they won't)
- When they invariably don't give you the return label, or a refund, or something else to your satisfaction, raise it with eBay (after the requisite number of days), who will refund your purchase
This is why I stopped using eBay to sell things as a regular person - I just list them on Gumtree now. The last few times I used eBay to sell things it ended up essentially as theft, the buyer claims some attribute was not as described, eBay automatically side with the buyer and they get to keep the item and the money. As a seller you're out of pocket.
Meh, so what. If you use it for selling then yeah it sucks but if it’s for buying only, the feedback doesn’t matter so I personally would rather get my money back and open yet another account. But I understand it can be a problem for some.
Also, how is it even possible for a company to close your account if you charge back and win?? “We tried to rip you off once, you didn’t let us, so we don’t want to trade with you anymore” is an interesting stance.
The example you've provided of making it difficult to return an item (and thus also difficult to claim a refund) is growing, and it's something that I have also seen on Amazon.
As for Ebay I refer to it as the "place your grandparents go to get scammed" because there are simply too many gaps in their processes that allow scams to flourish and Ebay's customer service are only permitted to accept very specific types of evidence. This inflexibility allows scammers to thrive there.
I personally swore off Ebay after dealing with another type of scam that was operating in the UK. Whereby Ebay recognised unregistered mail tracking labels as if they were a fully tracked courier service. Scammers in the UK caught onto this error, providing a scam which goes roughly like this:
1. You buy expensive item on Ebay from scammer (usually a hacked account).
2. The scammer acquires Royal Mail tracking labels. (It's possible to pre-purchase them as Royal Mail aren't going to record the delivery address, unlike a fully tracked service where each label is associated with an address and parcel specs.)
3. The scammer assembles a basic parcel and addresses it to an address that is near the victim, but not exactly the victim's address. Typically the address will be a nearby convenience store as they will sign everything that comes in.
3. The scammer applies one of their Royal Mail tracking labels and drops off the parcel in a post box.
4. The tracking label's barcode is automatically scanned as it passes through sorting centres, however the address on the package is never recorded by Royal Mail; the tracking is effectively solely for the label.
5. The parcel is delivered to the false, but nearby address. The Royal Mail system receives a signature, a GPS imprint and a time of delivery - but crucially again the address is not recorded by Royal Mail.
At this stage you can see how the scam comes about. All a scammer needs to do is send anything to a nearby address and Ebay will deny refund requests because the scammer has a tracking history from Royal Mail.
However to be fair to Royal Mail, their website for this product clearly stated that it was not a fully tracked service, a nod to the shortcomings of the approach. I believe the product has now also been discontinued, instead now a photo of the delivery is taken - which would provide useful evidence to stop this kind of fraud.
My teenage son loves exclusive hard to get sneakers. I’ve tried to indulge him on sites dedicated to 3rd party apparel sales, but there are endless scams of people putting something like “Size 12 men’s”, and what you get is a size 12 toddlers.
You can eventually get your money back but the friction in the process is very high and time consuming.
They can. In the UK at least. I suppose there's a game theory element that if people know they get to keep the item then they could game the system themselves.
People certainly game Amazon, I've had m.2 ssd boxes arrive with nothing in them. Clearly someone's ordered it, kept it and returned the box but it costs Amazon more to track this sort of stuff than to just accept some losses.
And I thought it was outrageous that no way for me to stop this trash advertising newspaper van from dumping their paper on my driveway twice a week every week for the last 15 years.
There is essentially one out there, all water logged usually, at all times. I pick them up and throw them away, and the next day it's back.
Years ago a few times I waited and watched and confronted the guy when he actually showed up, I almost got beat up! Mexican couple and the guys wife had to hold him back from getting them I into trouble). I tried calling an office number found on the paper itself several times. I did get a person, who said "ok", which resulted in nothing. They even asked if I rent and tried to say that if I rent, then I don't own the property, and so can't make the demand.
It's a small thing but it's ultimately somehow just ridiculous that there is no way to stop someone from dumping some trash on my property, short of moving to a gated community which is nine thousand times worse than this "trash tattoo". It just boggles my mind that even if you decided to expend the effort, it turns out there is nothing you can do. Sue the paper company? For what damages? What court would waste 8 minutes on something like that?
Anyway my point was "and I though that was outrageous"
> What court would waste 8 minutes on something like that?
Small claims. This sort of thing is what it's there for.
Don't get me wrong: the judge will be annoyed at the pettiness. BUT. As long as the judge sees that you went way above and beyond in trying to resolve the issue out of court, and you ask for reasonable damages, they will be pissed about the pettiness but the wrath will be applied to the other party.
For me:
1. I spent literally years trying to resolve the issue. Dozens of letters, phone calls, etc.
2. I asked for "2.49 times (my hourly rate times the number of hours I spent dealing with the issue)" because the statutory damage multiple was lower-bounded by 2 and upper-bounded by 3). I only billed for hours during the 9-5 work day when I was consulting, and only time during the work day when I was taking vacation time from a W2 job.
3. I included some of the time I spent on contacting them and writing letters, but not all of it. I told the judge that the sum included only time spent after my third letter, when it became clear that taking them to court might be the only possible resolution.
4. I apologized on behalf of both parties that something so silly couldn't be resolved out of court, and stressed that I tried really hard for years to work with the business owner.
In your case, asking for $1k or so would probably be fairly reasonable after a year or two of trying to resolve the issue, especially given the confrontation with the driver and the smoke-up-your-ass about renting.
Judges really do not want you to waste their time. The key is to demonstrate that you are also exasperated by the fact that the court was the only way to resolve your disagreement.
> Judges really do not want you to waste their time.
That's kind of funny, given that it's small claims court. I mean, I understand that it's a fee for littering, and not causing physical harm -- but... What else are you supposed to do if someone is habitually littering?
1) if they're entering your property without your permission, that is trespassing. If they've been doing it for ~15 years, you probably have a good case for reasonable damages worth more than 8 minutes of a courts time. You can start collecting evidence, sending a certified letter to the business requesting they stop delivery, and bring a lawsuit against the company. The courts are obligated to follow the law, and if your jurisdiction is like mine (WA State), you can sue for reasonable costs--investigation, 15-years worth of trash delivery (what is that like 10 garbing bins worth?) attorney fees, and ask for punitive damages (15 years of this behavior is clearly a nuisance, and you will likely find a sympathetic judge/magistrate). Of course, just because you get a judgement in your favor does not mean you will easily be able to collect. So that leads me to
2) They are also illegally littering on your property, which is a crime, and of which you can involve the police. As others have noted, this is a low priority offense to the police, but you can collect evidence (video recording of them doing it), and a certified letters requesting they stop. Armed with that evidence, you should be able to request the police to come and fine the driver for doing so. The police won't respond right away, but with enough persistence on your part they will. Depending on your jurisdiction, you could also elicit the help of your local city/county councilperson to get the police to take action sooner.
Accessing the walkway to the front door and knocking on the front door is not trespassing, even if there is signs posted. Wandering off the path, going around the back, looking in windows is trespassing - but accessing the front door to deliver, ask for directions, or invite someone to tea is not. You can be asked to leave which then could be turned into trespassing. Decent write up about it - https://www.radford.edu/content/cj-bulletin/home/june--2017-...
> You can be asked to leave which then could be turned into trespassing.
The OP definitely asked for the deliveries to stop, and even had a confrontation with the delivery driver. Seems pretty clear that he's expressed his preference that they not enter his property.
Typically renting has no bearing on refusing mail delivered. It's your current domicile. If they are coming into your property to deliver the mail, you could post no trespassing and call the cops on them.
Courts spend time on all manner of things, so in fact they would spend 8 minutes on it.
Not sure what the Canadian trespass laws are but would that work?
In the UK you’d have to ask a trespasser to leave first as it’s a civil matter.
If they don’t leave immediately or they threaten you then it’s criminal and you can call the cops.
So if you don’t catch them trespassing you can’t really do anything about it later.
Does Canada treat trespass a crime?
Here, if damage is done during trespass that’s also different. Which is why I think I’d go the small claims court route for the cost of clean up and time spent dealing with it.
In Netherland mailboxes often have a no/no or yes/no sticker to indicate whether they want to receive free newspapers and junk mail. Deliverers tend to be reasonably good (though not perfect) at obeying these.
In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox. Technically, they own your mailbox, even though you have to provide it at your expense.
That's why they are dumping the advertising on his driveway, and why newspapers often provided a separate box for your newspaper that you mount below or beside your mailbox. I used past tense because we have no local newspaper anymore.
If they put this crap in your mailbox, they'd be committing a federal crime and postal inspectors would probably track them down if they got enough complaints.
A more complete (but still not fully so) statement is that it is generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to put anything into your mailbox, and it is also generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to take anything out.
Sounds like the postal service picks up your mail from your own mailbox? That's completely different from the situation in NL. Here, we post our outgoing mail in big red mailboxes that exist solely for that purpose, but anyone can put stuff in your mailbox, which is usually in your door, so mail arrives on your doormat.
>statute that prohibited the deposit of unstamped “mailable matter” in a mailbox
I assume the outgoing mail, if stamped, is ok.
Edit; UPS may even be able to use it if the item has postage paid, but in that case they would just have USPS deliver it.
In Australia we'll have a little no junk mail or no unsolicited mail sign and most box stuffers are good at following that even though there's no legal obligation - except real-estate agents. They suck.
I saw one as I was leaving one day who had just left a typical pamphlet in our mailbox. I pointed out the no junk unsolicited sign and he started on how it was important information I may be interested in.
I suggested that while that was a nice rationalisation, he knows it's bullshit and he should get his hand off it.
I feel like that system has broken down in recent years, since for delivering junk mail, so many refugees have been hired (as an easily exploitable and desperate workforce), who don’t yet have much knowledge of the local culture and how important those stickers are here.
Those kinds of things tickle the crazy part of my brain. This would make me want to save up a year's worth of papers (maybe collect them from my neighbors who want to participate) and quietly return them to the door or lobby of the business in question. Bonus if they've been sitting outside the entire time.
I had a similar problem. I opened the paper, found the small print with a phone number I could call to cancel the "subscription", and after a few weeks, the physical spam stopped showing up.
Talking to the person delivering the paper will likely result in nothing; they don't own the business, and are likely contracted to deliver the stuff. You don't pay them, so they have no incentive to listen to you. (Although the violence is weird and unexpected. What did you say to them?
(I delivered untargeted physical spam in my early teens, a TV guide)
Why you think the person who's delivering doesn't have an incentive to listen?
They're paid to deliver to N addresses, if they know that X, Y, Z addresses don't want the delivery they're still getting paid for N deliveries.
When I did this job looooong ago I'd get a stack of papers, along with a strike-though list of addresses that shouldn't be delivered to, as those people had contacted the publisher.
But over the course of doing this job for a summer or two I'd also have people instead ask me to stop delivering in person, which I could use to overlay my own strike-though list at the beginning.
Those were much better, as unlike the first list they didn't subtract from the N, free money!
Clearly that didn't work for the GP for whatever reason, but I think it should in general. Then again this was a different time, and not even the same continent, YMMV.
They aren't told to deliver to any specific addresses. This is 100% why they can't actually comply with a request not to deliver. The guy in the truck doesn't have some list of addresses and has no time or capacity to be consulting any such list even if he had one. He has a route and the route is whole streets, and probably has to cover many whole streets every day, and probably gets paid almost nothing for it, and so probably goes to some other job after that every day. Some individual exceptions like remember this house and that house is probably utterly impossible.
Their unworkable business model shouldn't be my problem so I'm not excusing them, just saying what the realities probably are.
In the scenario I described you'll need to consult or maintain such a list anyway.
This'll differ by jurastiction, but in most of Europe you're allowed to deliver unrequested advertisements by post, but you're obligated to stop when asked.
I'm saying that in my case the paper boy was incentivised to oblige, but not inform the head office.
> Some individual exceptions like remember this house and that house is probably utterly impossible.
Most people (even the uneducated, or otherwise considered dumb) can remember and sing along to the lyrics of hundreds of songs, and remember the location of hundreds or even thousands of items kept in their house.
So even if you're delivering to hundreds of addresses you'll quickly start to remember the exceptions, at least that was my experience.
I think both you and the comment above you are assuming that the person on the other side of the phone isn't an ass. If they are, they're likely to make up things about renters and they're likely to be abusive to the person doing the deliveries.
I usually try to charitable when interpreting other people's actions, but... There's always a possibility that someone's just mean.
You are forgiven for taking this with salt, but I swear I did not open the dialog outwardly as annoyed as I was inwardly.
I picked up the paper and tried to give it back (not by throwing it at him I swear). I live one house from the end of a dead end, and so he has to stop and back up or turn around so I approached the driver side while he was stopped.
I won't say I stayed perfectly bland and pleasant by the end but I didn't come out swinging or yelling. I never did more than just say "I don't want this" though.
I chalked it up to they probably just have a hard life with far more and worse stresses and worries than I. I actually feel bad for them having to do that job.
> I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering.
The police (and public prosecutors) have no duty to stop anything, and are in theory free to prioritize their efforts against illegal activity anyway they want so long as they don’t violate, e.g., anti-discrimination law in how they do. And, in practice, they are free to prioritize even more freely than that.
Of course, leaving unwanted material on someone else’s property is also the tort of trespass to land, so if you can identify the tortfeasor you can act directly against them rather than trying to convince public authorities to prioritize prosecution of the offense.
Right. The job the police is actually not to help you or defend you or protect you or to recover your stolen stuff or anything like that.
Their job is to maintain order and protect all of society. They track down the guy that robbed you because society doesn't want robbers on the loose, not for you because you were injured.
Same here, once a week. Well I've never caught the driver in action, not that it would matter anyway. For me this is a local paper printed and distributed by the San Jose Mercury News. Yes that Mercury News. Phone calls always get a full voicemail box, and emails are of course unanswered! I just realized, I will need to call their advertising line to get this stopped.
I'm more of a creative application of wasp nest that just happens to be right where he turns around kind of guy.
In my head anyway. Apparently I'm more of a "well you can't look at any other part of my house and call me fastidious, so whatever my front yard has permanent trash" kind of guy.
It's still a crime. Getting unwanted newspapers is not something worth committing a crime over. Let alone provoking someone identified already as being violent.
I'd almost bet money that it's assault if the target decides it is.
Gently putting your hand on someone's shoulder is assault if it's unwanted. Water is less pleasant.
Here's some people on a random website claiming to be lawyers, but also saying the right words: that they can't give specific legal advice and that the OP should not do that and/or get a lawyer. https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-be-charged-or-arres...
There's an article from San Francisco about a man being charged after hosing down a homeless woman. Ultimately the charges were dropped, but the answer to your question is yes with caveats.
No, I'm saying that dumping a ton of rubbish outside someone's house is not something that a well adjusted person does regardless of whether someone tells them to do it.
But if you must - it's even less of a defense now, because in WW2 Germany there was a significant amount of social pressure to fall in line. In the modern day no-one cares if you just refuse, or get a different job.
But also, it's a terrible analogy because a punch to the face is potentially lethal force but delivering a newspaper isn't. Which, obviously, matters.
Spraying someone with a hose in this situation is battery. Unless the newspaper is being launched at your person with a potato gun, you're going to have a hard time coming up with a defense against that battery charge.
Unlikely, but not worth it. Also, MUCH more importantly, wrong target. Don't go after the laborer. Go after the capitalist paying him to harass you. Go after the owner's wallet and time, not the delivery guy's clothing.
> Years ago a few times I waited and watched and confronted the guy when he actually showed up, I almost got beat up! Mexican couple and the guys wife had to hold him back from getting them I into trouble)
Just out of curiosity, how did you know they were Mexican and how is it relevant?
Reminds me of own struggles a while back with people upstairs actually slamming doors and drawers around at 3 AM, sometimes as late as 5 AM. How is there nothing that can legally be done to stop something like that? It's insane.
Sounds like the sort of noise complaint that you can talk to the neighbor, the landlord, or the condo association but legal avenues are probably going to get you laughed at.
Yes, I contacted all of them, only the landlord bothered to do anything. If the noisemakers had been the owners I would have had no recourse other than to move. That's ridiculous.
> The Better Business Bureau (BBB) told CBC that it sounded like a vendor-return scheme that's common in the US but rarer in Canada, where foreign sellers dodge fees associated with storing and shipping return items by sending the items anywhere but their own addresses.
So someone is dropshipping products from China. Because they are not fulfilled by Amazon, they would have to pay return shipping to... probably nowhere useful in China. So the seller says "screw it!" and just tells customers to ship their crappy returns to an address they pull out of a hat. Am I understanding the scam correctly?
Would it not be pretty easy to at least figure out the seller responsible?
That's how I understood it, but then at the end she said this, which makes it sound like someone hacked her Amazon account and turned it into a seller account:
> Nitu says the deliveries were tied to her dormant Amazon account.
> "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," she said.
Knowing Amazon, they probably queried the address and it came up to a bunch of sellers who equate to some product owners annual bonus and are probably a single entity gaming the system by having multiple accounts with fake brands.
A similar thing actually happened to me. I was receiving a small package (probably a phone case) about once every few weeks while living in a rental house.
The seller had put my address as their address, so all undeliverable mail came to my house.
I brought a bag full of these packages to the post office, explained the situation and gave them the packages. The entire pile of packages ended up back at my house a few days later.
I found the seller on Amazon and messaged them:
———
Me: I haven't ordered anything from you. I have received 6 packages that you sent but ended up at my house because the return address that you used is my address, not your address. Could you use a different return address?
Seller: Dear nulltype, We're sorry about this, we can't change the address at the moment because of the cumbersome policies on Amazon, but we'll change it when we have a new production facility. Please forgive us. You are free to use the packages. Sincerely,
Here in Germany, something similar happened to my neighbor. He always rejected the packages but sometimes they left them in the stairwell. At first, he took them to a drop-off station but at some point, he went to ignore them completely. After half a year, this led to the stairwell being full of unopened packages until someone threw them on the street. As a result, he then received a bill from the city cleaning service. I sadly don't know what happened after that because I moved away.
I remember TV ads in the 70's or maybe 80's that were PSA from the US government, where the entire message was "if you receive something unsolicited in the mail, you own it and do not owe anyone anything" They featured an Eskimo in the middle of a frozen nowhere opening a package that turns out to be an electric fan. He says "gee. Thanks!"
Like what happened to that?
I also don't know why they ran those ads. They must have been expensive (or maybe not, maybe the government back then could just commandeer them), so presumably there must have been some kind of popular scam they were trying to fight.
There used to be “gift” scams where a company would send you products unsolicited and then send you a bill for them and aggressively push you into paying.
Maybe, but why would you want to own other people’s junk? All you really “own” now is the responsibility to dispose of it. It’s not like they’re sending PS5s through the mail to random recipients, it’s usually just old shoes
This is in Canada not the US, so I don't know how laws are different.
In the US if it is addressed to you - which these seem to be - then it is yours to keep or dispose of as you will. However customs charges are not a part of law that I know anything about, that is a weird area where the law may not even be clear who owes.
Amazon often delivers a neighbor's package (neighbor lives a mile away, so not an easy delivery to make for us) to our house. However since these are address to the neighbor and just misdirected we do not own them and have to help the neighbor get them. (a few times we called amazon and they said "just keep it", then they became ours, but now the neighbor just drops by) I have updated both addresses in OSM, so hopefully this will stop, along with friends trying to visit us actually getting to our house.
> However customs charges are not a part of law that I know anything about, (..)
I'm no lawyer, but afaik customs charges are owed by party that does the importing.
This may be eg. Amazon's customer, with Amazon just doing the warehouse/shipping part. It may also be that Amazon imports on customer's behalf, or does the importing itself.
Either way, woman in the article would not be liable for customs duties (or any other shipping charges / fees for that matter), because she's not Amazon's customer here.
She didn't ask Amazon to import anything on her behalf. Or arranged import herself using Amazon. Yeah, her name may be on the label. Yeah, she may have a (dormant) account with Amazon. But for all those packages mentioned in the article, there's no legal agreement between her & Amazon. Or between her & original seller. Or between her & shipper that brought the goods across international border. So how on earth would she be liable for custom charges for "importing" anything? She didn't.
Legally speaking, that would leave her as innocent bystander, that just happens to be where delivery person dumped a package.
In her shoes (no pun intended ;-), I'd just let this go to court & see judge move the charges to Amazon. Maybe Amazon would fix the problem if it turns into a recurring-costs issue.
But both Amazon and UPS or FedEx will still claim that she owes them money, which if she simply ignores it results in material damages to her credit, which can F up everything else in your life.
That damage itself might give her some weight in court but that is it's own whole 2nd career just pursuing that which is unreasonable to inflict on someone.
To get justice requires several thousand in lawyer fees in the best case, all for what looks like $100.
If she owed millions a lawyer would be worth it and would probably get lawyer fees. However this looks more like a case where courts will get mad about wasting their time.
"if you receive a phone call and the number is not in your contacts, do not pick up. listen to their voice mail, or make your voice mail message 'please send me a text' and wait for a text"
"if you receive a text message / email from anyone and it has a link in it, don't click it"
the administration at school asked us to join a whatsapp room for those kinds of comms, and they DM from that for anything specific
it's a cute solution, made me think of my school back-in-the-day having a basic php-type forum for snow days / announcements etc, always wanted to add DMs and notifications to that...
I'm curious what locale you're in and how popular WhatsApp is there. I feel some sort of way about having to make a WhatsApp account for this sort of communication, over, say, a phone call, text message, or email
i'm in NYC, but yea that was when i set up a Whatsapp account. i've heard of it before but all my friends are either on SMS/group chats or insta
i think their main use was automating reminders and alerts, since they probably couldnt find a way to blast SMSs to people without it being flagged eventually as spam
Public Service Announcements are often aired either when someone hasn't paid for an ad for that spot, they want to be able to say they are serving the public (since the airwaves are theoretically public, broadcast stations have to theoretically serve the public good), or someone actually did pay for them
Anyway, in other articles similar to this that were in the USA (where the law about not having to pay for unsolicited packages applies) the people were getting several packages every day (If I recall it was dozens). So getting one or two things you didn't ask for would be fun, getting several of them every day would not.
Is the Canadian Better Business Bureau more legit than the entity in the US named Better Business Bureau? I kinda rolled my eyes when I got to where the article mentioned BBB, but maybe the Canadian one is more legitimate.
And if I'm wrong about the US BBB, let me know, but from what I've read it's closer to pay for praise than a true consumer advocate.
I'm canadian and I've always assumed they are a scam. Anything "BBB accredited" is a red flag to me, but it's more just folk knowledge, I don't have any first hand experience.
There’s a signalling theory basis to this [1]. The BBB is a cheap signal, not a costly one, so it comes across as “trust me! I’m trustworthy! Look, I gave a bit of money to the trustworthy business people!” That is, it’s not a genuine signal of trustworthiness, so any effort expended on this signal may actually backfire: people might question why the business needs to send this signal in the first place.
On the topic of cheap signalling, a very long time ago, I was out to dinner with a friend. She was excited to try the place out, but as it turned out, the restaurant was pretty disappointing. "But it says 'Zagat rated' in the window!", she said.
I pointed out that they didn't have the actual score in the window & just because they rated it doesn't mean they rated it well...
I have no experience with the BBB's accreditation process. I have read the same stories you have and it sounds like a textbook protection racket.
I can say that every business that's tried to cheat me has prominently displayed an A+ rating. I've tried to report malfeasance to the BBB, with police reports, and been completely blown off.
What is the legality of leaving your stuff on someone else's property? Unwanted UPS packages, phone books, door tags for the local Chinese restaurant, "newspapers" that are actually just all advertising, landscaping business cards weight down with rocks.
This is all trash; how are people able to legally dump it in my driveway? Is it actually illegal but such small stakes that nobody ever gets the proper authorities involved? Is there some loophole in the law that allows you to dump your junk on someone else porch if it's filled with ads?
> Is it actually illegal but such small stakes that nobody ever gets the proper authorities involved?
In the USA:
Basically yes, but with various incantations required depending on the state to make it illegal. The "too small stakes" part is uniform.
In my state, in the USA, it's technically abandoned property the moment it's left and you don't need to post a sign or make an attempt at contacting the owner.
After a certain amount of time, with reasonable attempts to give notice, you can start charging storage fees.
The law is written to work best for things like abandoned cars or furniture in mind, not nuisance mail, but there's jurisprudence establishing that there was broad legislative intent. The door tag thing might even fly. But for something like a door tag, damages would never be worth the filing fees even after hundreds of years of storage. It would have to be a real "fuck you" move because damages would be like hundredths of a cent against mid 2 figure filing fees.
In this case I think the subject of the article would actually have a case and real damages, in the USA, in my state.
But more importantly: the business owner has to either show up in small claims or pay a lawyer to do so. It's certainly a way to get a company to cut shit out for the cost of a filing fee, even if damages awarded are trivial. And in this case I think a judge would be very sympathetic.
That will depend. Littering is a separate area of laws from mail. And this is in Canada which will have different laws. There is also customs involved here which is another tricky area. In the US if it is addressed to you, then it is yours to do with as you like, but if it is addressed to someone else (and misdelivered) you have to make it available to the intended receiver.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
I never really liked Amazon but i thought they had their shit together. Bought a pretty expensive shower with them and it didn't arrived for a week. Went to the website to track the order and it said someone else had received. They provide the name of the person who signed the deliver but no document no nothing. So, someone out there has a beautiful new shower while i need to go buy another one in another store and wait again for it to get here.
Did you contact customer support for a refund? If you never received it, then they screwed up, and in my experience it's very painless to get Amazon to issue a refund for things like this.
...unless it was a third party seller
... or hazardous to ship
... or shipped via a third party delivery group
etc etc etc.
Amazon told me walk about and contact different people around my neighborhood when UPS dropped a refrigerator off at the wrong house.
(let's nevermind that I use a wheelchair in an area with zero accessibility; blindly knocking on doors is dangerous.)
It took weeks of coercion from both myself and the manufacturer before Amazon lifted a finger; meanwhile the manufacturer themselves sent me out a unit for the sake of providing some kind of justice.
During the same period Amazon shipped me a quart of boat varnish that I had ordered. It arrived smashed in half with the entire contents spilled out of the cardboard box, obviously ran over or some such, presumably leaving its' contents all over the delivery vehicle. When confronted with pictures of the event they said "Oh , our apologies, but we offer no refund or guarantees on chemical/industrial purchases or deliveries that require hazardous shipments."
So then you just order another one? Unless you had some kind of hard deadline for when you needed the shower, you were in the same position as before you placed the first order.
It sounds like they handled this particular situation completely reasonably (modulo the least-effort job everyone does these days), and your expectations were off. If you're ordering stuff online, the table stakes include waiting and dealing with exceptions.
Inconsistent experience. I had bought other things with them that arrived in the expected deadline with no troubles. This is the kind of deal that I'm willing to make. I buy something from you, you tell me when you are going to delivery, i get the product.
Once there's delays and problems with the delivery (like giving my product to someone else) it makes me not to want to buy from you again; cause I'm not sure when I'll get my product or even if I'll get it.
But "inconsistent experience" basically applies to everywhere these days. I could complain about Amazon's delivery, just like I could complain about USPS, UPS, and Fedex - each doing their own different but still craptastic thing.
Gone are the days where individual employees went above and beyond to make sure every customer was taken care with the details making sense, because gone are the days where companies treated employees like humans rather than expendable cogs. I've had boxes of leaking oil paint left on my doorstep at 9PM - the package was able to be marked as delivered on the promised day, and therefore everything was right in their system.
Do I blame Home Depot (the vendor) for that, or Rustoleum (the actual shipper), or UPS (the delivery company)? All of them and none of them specifically - it's "nobody's fault". Instead I complained to Home Depot for a refund and 20% off the reship, cleaned up the mess myself, saved the remaining 3 gallons of paint that hadn't flowed out of the cans into a new bucket to use later, and didn't feel bad about getting that paint for free. That's the best I could make of the situation - screaming at the customer service drones wouldn't have gotten me a better outcome. That's life in the 2020's.
You can certainly eliminate the variability of delivery - go to a brick and mortar store with stock. But the same caveat emptor maxim applies. You'd still better inspect what you're buying, because otherwise there's a chance you'll get it home and it will be defective in some way and you'll have to return it and do the whole process over again.
As someone who used to only return things if there was a serious problem or if I earnestly changed my mind, this really bugged me at first. But now I've just accepted this is how things work. I'll even buy things on sale that I just might want, knowing I've got a month or three to actually decide (with my only cost being the work required to effect a return). Companies wanted this regime of no honor besides blindly their fully formalized procedures, and so I'll play my part.
I'm not sure if the law is the same in Canada, but in the U.S., you are not legally liable for something you receive by failing to refuse delivery. This is a law put in place to protect businesses (or anyone) from being shipped something expensive that they didn't order, and then being sent an invoice, and on failing to pay the invoice, getting sued for non-payment because they have the item in their possession. In the 90s, this was commonly done with cheaply printed multi-volume business directories that would invoice for thousands of dollars.
Aside from the customs charge fight with UPS, where she's absolutely in the right, I don't understand why this is causing her stress. If she's a bogus return address, then no one is coming to get the items and there's no expectation on her to do anything in particular with the items. She can keep what she likes and throw out the rest.
For the unsigned CoD sure, but otherwise UPS has no way of knowing what packages are legitimate and which are not. Amazon is more culpable because they can track the return packing slips back to a seller, and have been notified of the issue, but apparently haven't resolved it. She could use discovery to demand that Amazon provide the seller's information, but chances are they are overseas and suing would be useless. So Amazon is really the party she needs to focus on here.
I wonder what the mechanism is for that, it seems obvious that you do NOT have to accept any and all packages from any company (maybe you do from the postal service/royal mail?) but how exactly do you formally tell them to bugger off?
And is it a UPS yes/no or do they get more fine grained?
I don't know how it goes in Canada, but in the US it is very easy to send someone to collections, and very difficult to dispute it.
If anyone wants to start a company, make one that disputes collections on behalf of consumers. I'm sure there will be plenty of people to pay monthly for such a service.
That depends on the level of collections. The first level for people who are likely to pay. Some doctors send all bills to collections for example - nearly everyone knows they need to pay the bill and will pay it, and the collectors need to be polite about this so the doctor keeps sending bills their way. The levels after that though are for people who either can't pay, or won't pay and you get the jerks of the collections business here because that is your best chance of getting you to pay.
You are however free to ignore the collections attempts, and explaining the situation to them should cause them to drop it (my - admittedly very few - experiences with collections agencies all ended up with them dropping the debt once it was made clear to them it is not valid and that they got effectively scammed by whoever sold them the debt).
It really sucks that these shipping companies can act as customs brokers without the consent of the recipient. They rack up huge fees for this "service". They should be required to get an agreement or rejection before proceeding. Why should this woman be responsible for these fees she never agreed to in the first place? Why should anyone?
When I was around 19 I received a phone call offering me a free sample of underwear. No strings attached, I specifically asked if I would have to cancel a subscription and they said no, it's just a free sample. I could subscribe if I wanted to.
So I receive my free package of boxers and socks and lo and behold next month I receive another with a bill. I actually liked them so I paid for a while and then I called in and canceled when I felt like I had enough underwear. They kept sending them. I sent an email canceling, they kept sending them.
So I sent another email saying that if they send me more stuff I'll consider it a gift and keep it. They kept sending for a few months and eventually stopped. Never even heard from any collections agencies. If I had I figured I'd just show them my emails canceling the service.
This is Dick calling from UPS. Hey, I’ve been trying to bring a box to your, uh, place, there, for the last three days but you guys are making so much noise you don’t hear me! I need a credit card payment on this thing: C.O.D. $242.
Sharing some experience. When hackers steal credit cards and want to verify if it’s working or blocked they also do something similar. Another pattern I have seen is that hackers order multiple items for a seller (retailer website) and have them delivered to multiple addresses over time where they don’t live and don’t care for the item. They however order an item that they want to a address which they can access. This throws off security and police as there is no pattern for machines to track and police don’t have resources to go to all addresses for checking.
My guess is some scammy third party seller just chose a random US address as a their “return” address, since Amazon forces every seller to provide one.
> They were sent by people across North America who intended to return them to the Amazon seller, with each box containing a return authorization slip to her address
Also in the video she states what the parcel has her name, address and her old telephone number... which is out of service for forty years.
This is yet another reason I try not to buy from sketchy 3rd parties on Amazon. It’s getting harder and harder to shop at Amazon. Walmart is no better because they are copying Amazon’s worst practice. We’ve been slowly transitioning our purchases to Target and other retailers where there are either little to no 3rd party sellers
...I was sure they check the return address at the border/customs crossing but apparently not? Does that mean that person X can send mail to person Y simply by putting the Y's address as the return address and then sending to some closely located non-existent address (so that the post office there would rebound it)?
All these packages contain Amazon return slips -- they are product returns not return mail. They were sent her directly by customers trying to return the product to the original seller.
When you want to return an Amazon purchase, Amazon gives you a return address label that you can print and attach to the package. In this case, that return label had this person's name and address.
I'm not sure how things work up there, but in the US you can refuse any unopened package by taking it back to the nearest carrier facility and telling them you refuse it.
This applies whether the package was dropped off or handed directly to you, signed for, taken into possession, or not. If the original seal is intact, the carrier must accept the refusal.
It's unfortunate that she opened any of them, because now the above doesn't apply and she probably technically took on some legal risk/liability by doing so.
Usually just because a package has been misdelivered, but you still know it's not for you, you still haven't gained the right to open it.
Still, hopefully someone will help her find a way out of her predicament.
By law, companies can’t send unordered merchandise to you, then demand payment. That means you never have to pay for things you get but didn’t order. You also don’t need to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.
If it's addressed to you, then yes. But if the mail carrier mistakenly delivers you a package addressed to someone else, you don't automatically get to keep it.
It's worth noting that the article is about a Canadian woman. Given that both the US and Canada have legal systems originating in Britain, there's a great deal of commonality in the legal code, but what the FTC says about US law does not necessarily apply to Canada.
All that said, the spirit of the law the FTC is citing is something reasonable enough I do imagine Canada has something similar. Just don't quote me on that.
In the US, non-misdelivered items are considered a gift; there are no actionable courses for recovery — other than being polite — to get the item back. Misdelivered items must be surrendered, on request, or you can fall awry if a laundry list of theft/mispossesion crimes.
The issue here is customs. Who is going to pay those fees - the women who got the product doesn't even want it. I suspect this is a never happened before situation and so the women legally owes. Though she can probably spend a ton of money on a lawyer and get out of it. She also has a case against whoever put her name/address in as where to return - but that is probably a foreigner so it is easy to win the case but impossible to collect. She may also have a case against Amazon, but this will be difficult as it requires arguing Amazon isn't a third party which they will claim they are.
Of course the case is in Canada, so I don't know how their laws work.
Yeah, I don’t know about Canada; but, a cursory reading of the US code seems to say that mail delivered by a carrier has already had all HTS (tarrifs) applied to it, or else it couldn’t be in the country (modulo criminal enterprise). I mean, IANAL, not legal advice, etc. But… if delivered on purpose to the address, it’s a gift, and there’s no possibility of a custom on it.
I will forever be confounded by people that get free stuff and then try to find ways for it to cost them something. If you are literally handed stuff free of charge, like... keep it or sell it? This isn't finding a lost item, this is an item being sent to your address explicitly! No law or moral violation in that. Even if I was filthy rich I would try to profit from this. Even if it was an accident, packages get lost or damaged all the time, what is your compensation for the time you spend fighting to send them back their stuff?
It... it's Canada. You can refuse deliveries and they just go back to the sender. That's how that works. Why did she accept them if she didn't order things? Because UPS sure as hell doesn't deliver anything that hasn't had the import duties and taxes paid first (source: me, several times because the phone number their automated system calls you from gets flagged as a spam number).
Not sure who's delivering them to in this instance but here in the Yukon Territory, Amazon has contracted a private company to deliver their parcels. I have them on video just throwing a delivery over the chain link fence at our business at 8PM.
Previously our Canada Post office handled them, which would have allowed someone to refuse the parcel.
Packages with taxes on duties on them must have those paid before delivery happens. If it's a "normal" delivery then sure, you might end up with a pile of boxes, but that doesn't seem to be quite the case here.
I've had UPS packages dropped on my front porch with import duties and taxes by UPS, without my consent. And then received a bill for duties+taxes+brokerage fees for a service that I never asked.
UPS official policy says they won't deliver without collecting the payment (though they can't verify the payment is valid) but in reality sometimes drivers do it anyway. UPS doesn't really have a procedure in their system for handling this or if they do most employees have no clue.
The best bet is to take it to a service center and talk to a manager there. Let them know you refused COD (or the package was sent unsolicited) and that you are refusing delivery. Tossing it on your doorstep does not count as accepting the delivery, they just do that because it is cheaper for them.
If you want to game the system sign up for MyUPS so you get advance notice of all deliveries to you. Then when these unknown packages show up bound for you reject them immediately. That goes into the computer sorting system and can often get the package pulled before it even reaches your local service center.
Unless processing fees are limited by law, shipping companies gladly pay customs fees at a border so they can then collect more money from the recipient. Whether or not they demand COD or ever deliver that package, they want that money.
I recently got a notification for a package that required some like €1 in customs plus €12 processing fees. With no info on what the package actually was. I found the whole thing rather ridiculous.
This article is written and posted by someone with no sense of logic what so ever. Would really love the OP to explain the full process of profiting from this because the guide is basically:
1) Collect shoes
2) ???
3) Profit.
Nowhere does it say anyone is profiting. Unscrupulous sellers are disposing of items they don’t want by sending them to a random address so they can avoid (more expensive) fees for them returning to their origin
The sellers don’t always hold their own inventory, or even have space to. They might not even be in the same country where they’re selling.
They have crates of stuff shipped from the factory directly to Amazon, and from here they presumably can’t simply tell Amazon “throw it all in the dumpster” if it isnt selling well - or maybe Amazon charges them fees for that. It’s now expensive or impossible for them to return it to where it was made, it’s not selling, and they are paying Amazon to store it.
So on the short list of bad options for a dropship seller, you make the call that it is cheaper to ship these unwanted things somewhere than to pay for them to sit in storage.
The incentives here are pretty deeply flawed. These giant online marketplaces make it really easy for sellers to have almost no skin in the game.
Because the seller is in China and they're already paying to have the product shipped to the US so they can sell it on amazon.com
If the product doesn't sell they don't want to continue paying fees to store the inventory in Amazon's warehouses and they don't want to pay the fees to have it shipped back to China so they put a random address in and tell Amazon to return the unsold product to there.
And so the poor American can’t deal with the surplus of items that another person in China is literally selling to pay the bills to LivE. oh the humanity that poor woman receiving all that free merchandise that she could return get off her lazy ass and sell like the person in China for money. Oh wait, she’s privileged. She lives in America. She doesn’t need it. Why does she just complain about it online then
This is people buying stuff off of Amazon, and returning it in the mail. The vendor doesn't have an address in North America, and shipping it to a dumpster is harder than a random stranger. So they just have returns go to a random stranger.
> Nitu said she has lost sleep trying to make the packages stop coming, and so far she's accrued Collect-On-Delivery customs charges from UPS that now exceed $300.
> "I refused to pay, and the dispute with UPS is still ongoing," Nitu said. "They're completely unreasonable. I tried to explain the situation and they were not nice, let's put it that way."
Every Canadian hates it when someone sends them a UPS ground package internationally without taxes/duties prepaid.
..would you be fine with forcibly having to do a new job that you have absolutely no desire to do? And these are most likely cheap crappy things, never mind ones that got returned, so worse than the regular amount of crappy, so it could easily just not be worth your time to figure out what to even sell it as, assuming anyone would even want to buy crappy returned things that came from who knows where. And then there's the customs charges, costs if your resold items get returned, and probably some other things, that would likely just guarantee unprofitability.
If it was so simple to re-sell returned things with a profit, I'd imagine plenty of companies would already have noticed, and would be providing "please send me your crap" addresses to these sellers who can't be bothered to handle returns, and pay a couple pennies to said sellers or something.
The packages are being sent to her because the fraudster sellers don't want to bother with them. The value of the shoes is likely not worth her time (else it would've been worth the seller's time -- the margins here are not huge).
And to make matters worse, she's being charged for the shipping:
> She says couriers have also abandoned packages on her porch, denying her the opportunity to refuse them. It has also resulted in more than $300 worth of Collect-on-Delivery (COD) customs charges from the United Parcel Service (UPS). The bills are mailed to her by the delivery company.
Ya it's crazy how far the US has fallen in terms of entrepreneurial spirit. In almost any other country, a continuous supply of resources like that would provide an independent income stream on eBay. And the products are already packaged!
It's like how we used to have victory gardens and plant fruit/nut trees and eat chestnuts from trees growing like weeds before they succumbed to blight in the early 1900s. Now all we have are ornamental pear trees that smell like rotten undergarments. Because free food would encourage homelessness or whatever.
Edit: woman lives in Canada, but I think my point still stands.
> would provide an independent income stream on eBay
Except if the goods have strings attached. "Strings" here could be breaking local regulations, being counterfeits, contaminated with toxic materials, etc.
Even if they are pre-packaged, reselling unexpected goods still means you have to open them, examine them, photograph them and write up a listing, and you have to do it for every single unique type of goods you receive.
Donate them as-is to charity or a thrift shop and reap the sweet sweet karma you've earned by putting like-new shoes into the hands (feet?) of people who need them.
Hmm maybe you didn't read the article, she's being charged by customs for the imports. Also, she doesn't want this stuff. It's not free shoes it's forced trash.
> "It's easier and cheaper for the sellers to have [returned products] sent to this random address than having it sent to China," said Hothi. "It could be that the warehouse has asked the seller to remove their unsold products from fulfilment centres, or their contract is ending."
Not everyone is motivated by financial gain. Also to resell garbage products is a full time job that many wouldn't find worthwhile...
These are shoes returned to a likely dishonest and fraudulent seller... if they had any value they wouldn't be dumping them on her like this. It's also possibly illegal for her to sell them.
Apparently some sellers keep their stuff on amazon shelves. Amazon will sometimes charge a stocking fee or a fee to send the stuff back if your business goes belly up. So the sellers will just pick a victim and dump their whole inventory on them because it is cheaper to ship them out than to continue to keep them stocked at amazon. But that may be wrong so someone with better insight could correct me if I have this wrong. This could be a side effect of the way Amazon works with 3rd party.
> if they had any value they wouldn't be dumping them on her like this.
A good percentage of online bought items are returned. Often, nothing wrong with the product.
Wrong size, color different from expected, customer changed their mind or bought elsewhere in the meantime, bought 3, picked 1 or 2 most liked & returned the other, bought for specific occasion but item arrived too late, item looked good on website but fabric doesn't feel right, etc, etc. Many possible reasons.
For seller, return shipping might be more costly than just dump product. Or was forced to clear stock due to storage costs. Doesn't mean item is worthless, just worthless to seller.
But forcing random person to deal with this somehow vs. seller doing that themselves, is of course asshat way to run a business.
