Those cases where they send you something you didn’t order and then insist on payment are sometimes (often?) even sleazier.
I’ve occasionally gotten some cheap-ass looking items with a letter saying they are made by disabled people in a sheltered work shop and won’t I please “donate” the requested amount to them. After I don’t respond for a few weeks I start to get “dunning” letters, questioning what kind of evil person I must be for not responding and depriving those poor disabled people of some income. When that happens, I don’t respond even more than I didn’t respond in the first place.
The sad thing is, I don’t really doubt that they are soliciting money for disabled people in a sheltered work environment. (But who really knows?) But I can’t and won’t condone or reward that kind of sleazy practice. If it’s really true, then I’m sorry for those disabled people slaving away in a shop run by sleazy unethical people like that.
Some people in this discussion are having difficulty comprehending what I’ve written. I don’t understand what’s so hard about this.
As I have noted several times already, the FTC page I linked to covers the specific case of unordered merchandise delivered to the correct address. Whatever the context in which that FTC page may exist, the wording is unambiguous, and does not indicate that my legal obligations vary depending on whether the merchant made a mistake or is attempting to badger me into giving them more money:
I have not suggested anywhere in this discussion that the FTC site is relevant to situations in which merchandise was ordered and paid for by someone else and then incorrectly delivered to me; clearly it is not. If I thought it was, I wouldn’t have asked for legal advice in my OP.
A fellow I work with told me he once got a very large package that was meant for the same numbered house but on 66th Street instead of 86th Street where he lived. He said he hadn’t looked at the mailing label before opening the box, assuming it had been something he bought on Ebay.
Inside was the most ridiculously huge vibrating dildo he’d ever seen. Like something you’d only see at a specialty shop in Amsterdam. He said he couldn’t even find something that big anywhere online.
He repackaged it and drove it over to the correct address, laughing hysterically as he handed it to them.
A link to the actual law or regulation would be more helpful than a FAQ page from the FTC.
As slash2k was saying and I said upthread, this regulation or law was intended to prevent an unfair trade practice of sending you merchandise and expect you to either return it or pay for it.
Is the law or regulation broad enough to include a good faith mistake in sending you an item? That is what we are still unsure about and would require a cite to the law or regulation, not just repeating what is on a FAQ page about what may be a completely separate issue and a statement made in a different context.
If a person at Amazon makes a good faith error and ships a laptop to your home thinking that you have already paid for it but you really didn’t and it is not your laptop and the package contains no solicitation to either pay or return, then depending on the text of the law or regulation, that may be a very different situation than the one the law or regulation addresses.
So, to me, I would need to look at court cases. On one hand, the text is rather clear, but the clear intention goes to deliberately trying to have unfair trade practices. I’m torn.
I believe I understand what you are saying, and I believe that you are incorrect.
The FTC page, despite its unambiguous language, covers deceptive trade practices, not clerical errors and misrouted packages.
I believe that it does not matter where the error occurred. Could be that a database error caused an order to be generated and shipped to you accidentally (instead of someone else, or just instead of nothing). Could be that the shipping department accidentally put extra items in the box with something you actually ordered. Could be that a 3rd party shipper accidentally dropped the box off at the wrong place (which is apparently what happened to you). None of those cases are covered by the law you’re talking about, because they are all clerical errors, not deceptive trade practices.
In all cases, you do not have the legal right to keep things that do not belong to you. In practice and in most cases, the value of the item will not be large enough for it to be a big deal, but if the item were valuable enough and you tried to keep it as a “free gift”, I would expect you to lose, unambiguous text on that FTC webpage notwithstanding.
I would like to point out that Title 39 refers to the Postal Service and the law you quoted specifies “mailing of unordered merchandise” , so it’s not at all clear that it would apply to any other delivery service.
doreen has pointed out the fact that the text of the law specifies mailing as opposed to other delivery services like FedEx, so that’s one issue.
The other issue is this: while I understand that prior cases set a precedent that often constrains how a law gets interpreted in future cases, it would be very, very weird if the Federal Trade Commission didn’t fully understand the laws they were charged with enforcing.
No doubt, like everything else, it depends on your jurisdiction. In Australia, CHEP won a long-running dispute against a major hardware store.
CHEP owns those pallets. Companies rent them. Companies pay Chep for the utility of using those pallets. Chep counts pallets and invoices people for the pallets they are holding. “Bunnings”, the hardware people, don’t deliver on pallets, don’t want pallets, and did not want Chep, or Chep pallets, and refused to pay. Chep sued Bunnings because Bunnings always still had some Chep pallets that somebody had delivered on, and Chep won in court.
Now Bunnings actively and proactively refuses delivery of anything delivered on a Chep pallet.
You can never keep anything legally that you know/believe belongs to somebody else, unless the rightful owner relinquishes his claim to it, or cannot be found despite a reasonable effort… That’s the short answer, but nitpicks can be contrived.
This is what I was thinking: if it has your name and address on it, it’s a gift by law. If it has someone else’s name and address on it, it’s clearly a mistake and you can’t keep it.
But again, you may be right or wrong. I’m not sure. Read the law I cited. The law certainly says that. But it also says that mailing an item to someone (correctly addressed) that they didn’t order is an unfair trade practice.
So the question remains, I believe, that if I own a company and Sam orders 50 umbrellas and Joe orders 50 pairs of gloves, and a clerk in the shipping department honestly and in good faith mixes the orders up, do neither Sam nor Joe have to pay for their items? (Assume we bill on credit).
The text of the law seems, on one hand to say yes, but on the other hand it discusses unfair trade practices, or IOW requires a mens rea. My company wasn’t trying to screw over Sam or Joe, we just made a mistake and that is not what the law tried to correct.
For example, in section (b) I have to put a notice on the package stating that it may be a gift. How would I do that if I made a mistake? I wouldn’t. So it seems that the law is not contemplating simple mistakes but only intentional trade practices which this law declares to be unfair.
Wouldn’t that be a situation where the action takes precedence over the intention, due to the potentially uncertain nature of the intention? You’ve sent Joe 50 umbrellas he didn’t order, and also sent him an invoice for those umbrellas. Joe has no idea about Sam’s order. He could believe that you’ve screwed up the order, or he could believe that you’re trying to trick him into buying a bunch of umbrellas. Since the result of screwing up the order is exactly the same as the result of an unfair trade practice, I’d think your intention would have no bearing if Joe decided to keep the umbrellas as an unsolicited gift.
Maybe, but on the other hand, the seller can point out that a) there’s no pattern of them doing this to other people (except Sam, but that’s actually more evidence that it’s unintentional) and b)Joe did in fact order something from them, so this is clearly not an attempt to get money from a stranger; and c) the company isn’t benefiting from this, since they’re billing exactly what people actually ordered and was shipped.
I don’t know the language of the particular statute or regulation and whether intention is required, but in cases where intention matters, the law doesn’t just throw up its hands and say ‘well, you can’t tell for absolute certain what anyone was thinking’; the judge can look at evidence about what the state of mind was. In the umbrella/glove mix-up, I don’t think the seller would have a problem convincing anyone it was an honest mistake.
Presumably both Joe and Sam will contact the company and complain about getting the wrong thing, and the company will arrange to fix it and ask them to send the wrong order back (at the company’s expense).
If Joe or Sam then tries to stand on principle and keep the misdirected order, exactly 0 people are confused about what happened. Joe or Sam is just trying to take advantage of a mistake.
Note that the law also requires that " All such merchandise shall have attached to it a clear and conspicuous statement informing the recipient that he may treat the merchandise as a gift to him and has the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender."
Again, this is about the trade practice of sending unsolicited merchandise and hoping for payment. It is not about taking advantage of clerical errors.
And when you are in possession of someone else’s property due to an error, then you have certain obligations to return it to them. Like, you don’t have to go out of your way, but if they show up and ask for it back, keeping it is theft.
How is this any different than the bank depositing money in the wrong bank account? Once the error is discovered they’ll do what is necessary to recover it. It’s not yours so I’m presuming if merchandise can be proven to be delivered to the wrong address any legal means necessary to recover it can be pursued.
I agree. If I was a lawyer arguing this case, I could argue both sides fairly forcefully. But this part of the law that you cited would tell me as a judge that it requires an intentional act by the company. Why? Because how does someone who shipped an item by mistake also have the foresight to place this conspicuous notice on the package?
If you placed the notice, you would have realized your mistake and not sent it in the first place. Further the definition of “unfair trade practice” suggests an intentional act and not mere negligence or mistake.
It’s inherent in the word “practice”; it’s something I do as a matter of course, on purpose, as part of a business. (e.g. It is the practice of auto mechanics to provide written estimates. Practice. It is an intentional policy of the mechanic to do it, not as an accident or mistake).
Perhaps others are right, though, and the law was direct enough to say basically that we don’t care if it was a mistake. It is important enough to stop unsolicited merchandise that we will provide this overly harsh remedy to anyone who ships unsolicited merchandise to eradicate the practice as much as possible. It’s a reasonable interpretation, one that I wouldn’t be surprised if a court followed. But as a judge, I would rule the other way.
Once, I received an envelope in my mailbox. It was properly addressed to be delivered to my address, except that was no person listed, not even Occupant/Current Resident. The return address, after researching, turned out to be a religious-based charity in a town 2 states over, one in which I had relatives. Inside was no note and several hundred-dollar bills. It just so happened that we needed the money badly at that time. My relatives denied any knowledge of it. I was unable to contact the charity.
Maybe a week later, a neighbor down the block, whom I’d never spoken to, knocked on my door and asked about an envelope with that exact amount of cash in it, saying her brother had sent it and gotten the address wrong. It was obvious to me that the cash was meant for her. Without stating what I did do at that time, what do you think I had the right to do? Would I be within my legal rights to have kept it, assuming the facts as I’ve stated them? Morally, I think no one would dispute that the money was intended for her and thus hers.
Spoiler alert: I’d already spent some of it, so I gave her what I had left and promised to give her the rest when I could get it together, a promise I kept sooner than I thought I’d be able to.
Online shopping didn’t use to be popular in Bucharest, where I live, but the new quarantine and state of alert situation has given a boost to online acquisitions. You would never get to keep an item that you didn’t order in Romania because you would never be handed something that you haven’t paid for.
From the moment you make the order to the moment the courier gets to your door, you can track the item step by step. First they give you an approximate day of delivery. Then you can see whether the item is in the warehouse or with the courier. You can also see whether the product is still in Bulgaria, where apparently the company selling the item through the online platform you ordered it on is located, or it has already entered Romania. On the application, there are messages left for you mentioning the time left till the delivery or any useful information. On the delivery day, the last message will give you an hourly interval when the courier should arrive at your place. If you have already paid (as it usually happens) you may receive the code that will be communicated to the courier so that he (or she) can make sure you are the legal recipient.
Well, it’s different in the sense that there didn’t used to be scam banks that would send you money and then try to force you to sign up for bank services, resulting in a law being passed that said that you got to keep money that banks randomly deposited into your account for promotional reasons.
If that had happened, then the waters would be muddier, as they are in this case. But, yeah, ultimately the result would be the same, because that law wasn’t about errors.