wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

A large parcel arrived on the doorstep this afternoon addressed to me from Amazon. I lugged it into the kitchen and rested it on the floor – the rest of the family quickly congregated around it – asking each other if they knew what it might be.

After a fight with some sticky tape, there were lots of frowns. The parcel contained a “Boom Box” – and not just any “Boom Box”. A quick search online determined it was PS400 worth of bluetooth speaker. It's huge, and probably very impressive if you like bluetooth speakers, and don't mind carrying around a piece of hardware that looks like something you might see on World's Strongest Man.

The cogs started turning in my head, and I sat at the computer – trying to figure out what on earth was going on. There was no suspicious activity within my Amazon account – no orders, no external access either (I have two factor authentication on every account possible). I popped open a chat window with customer service, and copied down all of the tracking information from the box.

Apparently we can keep it! They are running an internal investigation that will remain confidential to them – I asked if they could tell me who ordered it, and they just assured me that the internal investigation would be thorough.

After shutting the chat window I did a little digging of my own, and discovered that receiving random parcels is a known issue. Apparently online retailers sometimes send people parcels that they have sold to themselves in order to leave generous feedback. While you might think “how can they afford to give away products that cost that much”, you have to remember we don't know what they paid for the items they give away.

Anyway.

Amazon invited us to do what we like with the speaker. Here's the thing – we don't need it. We do need the money though, so today the unopened parcel was listed on eBay. Somebody is going to get a bargain.