A Virginia woman named Cindy Smith received an unexpected surprise when she started receiving more than 100 Amazon packages that she didn’t order. The packages contained various items, such as headlamps, glue guns, and binoculars. The deliveries began showing up at her Prince William County home, and she ended up with around 1,000 headlamps, 800 glue guns, and numerous pairs of binoculars.
Despite not placing any orders, Smith decided to make the best of the situation. She distributed the items to people she met, giving away headlamps and glue guns to anyone who needed them.
The packages bore Smith’s address but were addressed to a person named Lixiao Zhang, whom she had never heard of before. At first, Smith suspected it might be a brushing scam, where vendors create fake sales to boost their product reviews.
Similar incidents have occurred before, as another woman named Liz Geltman faced a similar situation when her house was filled with packages of children’s sheets she hadn’t ordered.
Amazon investigated both cases and discovered that vendors were shipping packages to random addresses to remove unsold merchandise from Amazon fulfillment centers. These unsolicited deliveries were not the result of scams or fraudulent activity, but rather a practice by some vendors to clear their inventory.
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