The Boxes at Your Door – The Weird Side of the Internet

The Boxes from Amazon at Your Front Door – by Liam Sweeny.

I love Amazon. No, I hate Amazon; it’s very love-hate. I sometimes buy dumb, small stuff for the anticipation of walking out of my apartment, on my way to commit various acts of mayhem, and seeing that little box in the hallway. You know the boxes, designed for convenience, mystery dimensions, three foot wide packages holding a wrist watch, showing that the behemoth has the sense of humor of a dad on Christmas Eve. So yeah, today I’m waiting for curtain rod brackets, pack o’ ten. Before you say I should shop local, where’s that? Walmart? Dollar General? If I had time and gas, sure, but isn’t that six of one – half dozen of the other?

But what if- and hear me now, allow yourself to be free of the shackles of conventional thought. Imagine if they just sent you stuff for free? No, this isn’t some pitch you see twelve feet below the Buzzfeed article. What if they were just sending you stuff?

This is what happened to a San Jose resident who chose to go incognito, because apparently getting free loot from Amazon isn’t something you want to find its way onto one’s obituary. She started getting loads of free packages from Amazon. Only problem was, it was all faux-leather car seat covers sold by a Chinese company through Amazon.

Turns out, there was a typo in the return address for the company. So not only did she get hundreds of the same item, each one came with complaints. I’m sure some of them were nasty because that’s just who we are.

Now there is a scam about this called a brushing scam, where a company will send products out to random addresses to artificially boost their positive ratings. I think if you’re going to have this kind of scam going, they better come high with their products, or, for Pete’s sake, don’t try charging them. That’s no stars for me.

More from Liam Sweeny…