Woman receives 100 Amazon packages she never ordered, keeps them all

Cindy Smith, a resident of, Virginia, US was shocked when packages from Amazon started piling up rapidly at her doorstep.

Cindy was left wondering how nearly 100 packages bearing headlamps, glue guns and numerous children’s binoculars were piling up in front of her house since she had never ordered them.

However, she soon found out that they were addressed to someone named Lixiao Zhang.

CBS affiliate station WUSA reported that the mysteriously delivered parcels including 1000 headlamps for running and biking, 800 glue guns and numerous children’s binoculars, which came from multiple carriers including FedEx and Amazon.

In a video shared by the news outlet, which captured the sight of dozens of boxes scattered around her property, Cindy is heard saying, “It’s a lot of packages. I didn’t order them.”

However, not knowing where to resend them, Cindy decided to distribute the products in her neighbourhood to prevent them from going to waste in a landfill.

Despite some strange looks from people, she generously handed out the items to anyone she encountered, including dog shelters, veterinary clinics and even random encounters at places like Burger King.

Initially, Smith suspected that she had become a victim of the infamous ‘brushing scam,’ where sellers send unordered items to boost their product ratings with fake positive reviews.

However, an investigation later revealed that this incident was more likely linked to a different ‘vendor returns’ scheme.

This scheme involves sellers attempting to remove unsold products from Amazon fulfilment centres by shipping them to random addresses, making it cheaper for them to manage.

A thorough probe into the matter by Amazon confirmed that the person named on the packages, Lixiao Zhang, had violated Amazon’s policy and closed his account.