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My wife received a small package, containing a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses (whether original or fake I don't know) in a nice leather-looking case. It is addressed to her, correct name, street, postcode, and her mobile phone number printed on it. Declared with a value of $15 printed on it, and coming from a company in China.

Everything fine, except she never ordered any sunglasses, and she never paid for any sunglasses.

I know there are scams where scammers send rubbish items to random people, and that entitles them to post fake reviews on Amazon, for example. The only thing is, this isn't a rubbish item. Even if these sunglasses are fake, they would be worth some money.

Does anyone have an idea how either (a) a company in China could send goods to a random real person by mistake, or (b) what kind of scam would make it worth while to send an item that would probably cost £10 to £20 on Amazon?

gnasher729
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  • I've forgotten - say I buy something on Amazon, which is NOT delivered by Amazon, but is shipped out by one of the various modes of affiliates. In fact, do you get any paperwork at all with the package which mentions amazon, your amazon order, or something to do with Amazon? Or do you just get a random package from the third party, with no mention of Amazon? – Fattie Sep 22 '20 at 16:16
  • No paperwork at all. Just a little box, with my wife's address and phone number, and the address and phone number of a company (I assume) in China. – gnasher729 Sep 22 '20 at 17:26
  • Is the information on the package identical to the information associated with your wife's Amazon account? I assume your wife does NOT have any new orders in her order history, or new reviews written from her account? If yes, and yes, then if this is an Amazon brushing scam, I'm surprised they can't detect this easily. I'd think it would be weird that many of the "verified orders" were not sent to a customer's verified address. Or, many of them were sent to the same address as some other customer's verified address that didn't make the order. – TTT Sep 23 '20 at 07:04
  • I wouldn't pay any regard to the declared value on the customs statement - in my experience in the UK Chinese declarations always lie about the value of goods in order to avoid import duties and it's always magically around the US$15 mark, just under the UK threshold of approximately US$18. – Andy Hames Sep 23 '20 at 11:02
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    If your wife is waiting for any real orders from China, they might have just sent a completely wrong product by accident without any intent to scam. It happens. – jpa Sep 23 '20 at 11:10
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    @gnasher729 Part of the problem here is your misconception that brushing only happens with "OBVIOUS rubbish items". I know you didn't say "obvious" but that's what you think. Bottom line, you have been fooled by a competent fake. Personally I agree; I don't understand why brushers don't just ship rocks... since no one checks the package but them or you. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Sep 23 '20 at 15:01
  • Should say that $15 is very cheap for RayBans - they start at over 10x that amount. – Darrel Hoffman Sep 23 '20 at 16:59
  • @jpa This seems likely. I've gotten a couple small wrong items (some USB-C cables I didn't order and a Dremel mandrel) in the past 6 months (and nothing of the sort in many orders previously). In one case I could identify the seller, contacted them, and they sent a replacement immediately. The other is a mystery but probably worth as much as whatever else I'm waiting for. – Spehro Pefhany Sep 23 '20 at 17:24

4 Answers4

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This is common enough that it has a name, a "brushing scam". Newsweek quotes the USDA:

The USDA said in a statement: "At this time, we don't have any evidence indicating this is something other than a 'brushing scam' where people receive unsolicited items from a seller who then posts false customer reviews to boost sales.

More news coverage:

The scam is worth it because an item that costs the consumer £10 to £20 probably cost the manufacturer, especially one making counterfeit goods, about £5 or less including shipping.

That £5 loss from sending your wife and many other consumers is worth it apparently. They can say they delivered so many dozens or hundreds without delay and have positive reviews from the completed sale and delivery. It is a way to buy reputation and legitimacy.

I would be surprised if you got a real Ray Ban product. A casual search turned up dozens of sites like this one which list how to spot a fake by:

  • build quality
  • material selection
  • serial numbers

The sites that say how to identify fake sunglasses are run by competitors who make their money by selling legitimate designer sunglasses.

Freiheit
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    To put this answer in context - if it cost maybe £5 per item shipped, and that created one 'verified purchase' review on Amazon, then 500 such shipments would make a 100 'verified purchase' review listing. Most items on Amazon have less than even 100 reviews, so imagine how much marketing power there is in doing this. I suspect the ongoing plague reviews on Amazon and other sites will seriously change how people shop online. – Grade 'Eh' Bacon Sep 22 '20 at 15:59
  • Wait - is gnasher's wife being asked to review the product? Also did this come from the Amazon system? (Note that G just mentions Amazon at the end as a price point, it's unclear if this was an amazon-processed order??) – Fattie Sep 22 '20 at 16:15
  • @Fattie good question. I am assuming there is a "post a review" card in or on the package but OP did not specifically mention one. – Freiheit Sep 22 '20 at 16:19
  • It's still seems too much value. For the scam as I know it, all they need is to deliver a package. Any value inside the package is lost money for the scammer. – gnasher729 Sep 22 '20 at 17:29
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    No sign whatsoever that Amazon has anything to do with it. Just a package with sunglasses in a nice case, my wive's address, and a Chinese company's address. – gnasher729 Sep 22 '20 at 17:30
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    @Fattie I would assume the person who sent the product has a way of posting the review themselves. As long as the review itself is guaranteed, they aren't "losing money" just "spending an ad budget." For example, they created an account and plugged in a random shipping address they got from who-knows-where (which turned out to be the Gnashers.) Once they receive notification of delivery (via package tracking to their own email) they can go and post their fake review, whose contents they fully control. – Steve-O Sep 22 '20 at 18:33
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    I made an edit with several news articles which describe what @Steve-O mentioned. – Freiheit Sep 22 '20 at 18:50
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    This answer still doesn't really summarize the key point of the person posting the review not having the item shipped to them, but instead to some random address (which happens to be the OP's). I didn't understand that until getting through the comments and seeing @Steve-O's explanation, which would make a good answer of its own. – Peter Cordes Sep 23 '20 at 01:57
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    I suspect (@Steve-O) that there's some crude level of filtering on reviews, discounting or blocking multiple reviews from the same recipient, so they can't just post the same thing to themselves repeatedly. Tracking info may also be necessary, so they have to deliver something – Chris H Sep 23 '20 at 12:57
  • This answer misses what to do about the situation. First, report the incident to the seller (ie: Amazon, etc). Second - change your account passwords. Something got hacked somewhere. – J... Sep 23 '20 at 13:25
  • If the answer can be improved please feel free to make edits. I'm not opposed to making it community wiki either. – Freiheit Sep 23 '20 at 13:28
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    I would add that what the asker received almost definitely does not pass any sort of manufacturing or safety tests. They may look like sunglasses, but they may not filter out UV, so really aren't much use. In more serious cases, you may receive (say) plant seeds or cosmetics, food or whatever else - but since you can't trace the lineage, they're potentially very dangerous and are probably best destroyed (and not just thrown away). – Ralph Bolton Sep 23 '20 at 13:34
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    @J... I'm not sure where the Gnashers call home, but for me (Fort Worth, Texas, United States), property owner information (names and addresses) is publicly accessible by searching the tax appraisal district's website. It's completely plausible, if this information is public, that this scam can occur with no compromised systems (besides the defrauded seller). – maxathousand Sep 23 '20 at 13:48
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    @maxathousand Sure, you can get addresses by just walking up and down a street and writing down numbers, but most likely the address pool used by criminals and scammers was bought wholesale on the black market as spoils from a data breach. There's no need to start digging a mine shaft when all you need is some high grade ore. It's much easier to just buy it up pre-chewed. – J... Sep 23 '20 at 14:05
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    @J... Sorry, I meant that all someone has to do is type in any property address and they can find who owns it. I'd say that information is fairly chewed already. If I was running a scam like this, I'd start with information that's freely available in the public domain before I paid for it on the black market. Try it yourself if you'd like. I only meant to reassure OP that it's perfectly likely that nothing has been "compromised" on their end that they need to worry about, but perhaps instead they're just the unlucky ones selected for this scam. – maxathousand Sep 23 '20 at 14:13
  • @maxathousand I'm not disagreeing - it's certainly possible that OP's address was obtained in such a way. Given that these are operations run by criminals, however, the probability that the information came from stolen data is not trivial, and that probability, imo, justifies a bit of caution - like changing your passwords. – J... Sep 23 '20 at 14:26
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    @J... I agree that there is a high likelihood of the addresses coming from stolen data, but the most likely sources of that stolen data means you can do little about it - for a few bucks you can buy verified names, addresses etc of millions of people that were leaked by other companies. Theres even a huge leak containing masses of personal information floating around out there that no one has yet been able to find an actual source for (ie the company that it was leaked from), its definitely a marketing database of some sort, but no one knows whose it is. Changing passwords wont help there. –  Sep 23 '20 at 21:06
  • @Steve-O thanks for explaining it. I find it hard to believe this would work on Amazon - is it more for "other" sales sites? – Fattie Sep 23 '20 at 22:24
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    @Fattie - Oh it works on Amazon. They just create a new account, using your info except for their own email and billing info, probably via gift cards or something to make it look normalish. Then they order off of Amazon and send it to you and it looks like a perfectly legitimate "Verified" purchase. – Eric G Sep 23 '20 at 22:48
  • Is there anything OP or others like him can do anything about this? – insanity Sep 24 '20 at 07:37
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    @J... If you ever ordered something from Amazon which was sent by a Chinese company, your address will most likely end up in a list used by such review scammers. Many of those companies will either work together or they simply belong to the same parent corporation, and so they know all the addresses used by people ordering from any of their companies. –  Sep 24 '20 at 09:20
  • @Moo The idea with changing your password isn't to prevent further brushing scams, it's to guard against the possibility that, if your data was stolen in a breach, that any passwords that may have been compromised are no longer in use. It's only a precaution based on the correlated probabilities that being involved in a brushing scam increases the probability that some of your online account information may be compromised. – J... Sep 24 '20 at 11:41
  • @insanity "Is there anything OP or others like him can do anything about this?" Not really. You could file a complaint with the online outlet (if you can identify it from the package you receive) although I don't know how much would come of it, and they'd be powerless to stop it from happening again in the future anyway. On the plus side, you're not actually losing anything or being hurt by this - your address alone is public information so there's no serious risk of identity theft here. You just have to decide what to do with the unexpected package. – Steve-O Sep 24 '20 at 13:58
  • @Steve-O It's very important to notify (ie: Amazon, etc) because it alerts them to the fact that their sellers are using brushing tactics to boost their review ratings. By reporting it you allow Amazon to be made aware of the problem and to take action against those sellers (who are otherwise polluting the marketplace with gargbage goods and misleading reviews). – J... Sep 24 '20 at 15:30
2

depends what was in the package and whether they asked for anything whether money review or otherwise

some larger packages contain drugs or goods ordered by a stolen credit card and delivered to a third party address by ups where someone follow the ups truck and removes the package before the fake name on it has a chance to find it

yukfoo
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In addition to the other answers, there is another possible scam.

The scammers may have opened a credit account in your wife's name and placed an order. Once the goods have arrived, they send a fake email, pretending to be from the merchant, and apologising for the mistake in sending the goods to the wrong person. They will send round a courier, to pick up the package at their expense.

The courier arrives and drives off with the package. The scammers now have some Ray Ban sunglasses, and your wife has a credit account she knows nothing about.

Simon B
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I just learned about a different scam that is supposedly used with eBay.

Someone orders an expensive item from a scammer. You happen to live in the same area, so they send you a cheap item, and UPS for example gives them a receipt for an item delivery. Meanwhile the victim hasn’t received any goods for their money. They complain to eBay or PayPal, but the scammer has proof of delivery. At least close enough to fool eBay and for the scammer to keep the victims money.

I have no idea if this would actually work.

gnasher729
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