Asking for an acquaintance who told me her elderly mother received in the mail, unasked for, an electronic ‘security auto-dialer’ device. There is a website out of state claiming it costs over $300 and if they send it back there is a 15% re-stocking charge. This acquaintance is going to send this mysterious little gadget back. Question is, will the elderly mother have to pay a bill for re-stocking? This sounds like a scam to me.
Don’t send it back, don’t plug it in, just shelf it or throw it away.
Let me tell you right now as someone who has done some small scale sales over the internet if I accidentally shipped something to the wrong address I would have been so grateful to get it back I’d offer to pay a reward.
This company is bullshit.
Contact your states attorney general. This is definitely fraud.
Unsolicited merchandise received via the US Postal System is yours to keep or throw away.
http://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_tech_021.htm
(emphasis added)
“autodialer”? Does it dial a 900 number in the Carribean? How does it work? Do you put it between your phone and the wall, so it can autodial 900 numbers when it feels like it? Considering computer modems are almost free, no “autodialer” costs more than a few dollars.
Either (a) it is designed to rack up pay calls, or (b) they will harass the person to (over) pay for it, or © they will have some sort of elaborate “how to return it” which will involve only taking a credit card number as insurance, honest it won’t be charged, or (d) it was shipped by mistake. I’m betting (d) is not the correct answer. It’s some sort of scam, especially if it was sent to a vulnerable elderly lady who does not normally buy from the internet or 1-800 numbers.
hang on to it until you are certain that it wasn’t ordered and then forgotten, or ordered inadvertently ( a check box on a website or paper form). keep and check the bills incoming.
It’s probably an el-cheapo burglar alarm that can dial your cell (or other number you program) when it goes off.
ETA: Add me to the voices that say to stick it in a closet and forget about it.
Scam scam scam. In future, she should say that she refuses delivery of anything she didn’t actually order. For this item, she does not have to pay for it and should report the harassing calls demanding payment that she’ll be getting.
Thanks for the answers. This is a scam, all right. The elderly mother is enmeshed in various sweepstakes contests and thought this was a “prize”.
Question: if she keeps getting annoying calls, what to do then? Report it to the phone company, or what?
If she is “enmeshed in various sweepstakes contests” I wonder if she actually ordered the gizmo accidentally one of the times she entered the contests? I’m thinking of the “sweepstakes” that I get from Reader’s Digest every so often that at a glance look like sweepstakes entries but in fact are well disguised order forms for books.
My guess (I am most emphatically not a lawyer and am not even in the same country) is that if it was sufficiently confusing you could return the gizmo with an explanation and a suggestion where they should stick it. However, it might be problematic if she simply refuses to return it and they can show that in the microscopic fine print of one of the entries she sent in it really did say she was ordering something.
Add me to the list of those voting, SCAM!
Absolutely CORRECT.
(bolding mine)
Scam city, totally! :mad:
Are you aware of the National “Do not call registry.”? Not sure if it would help in this instance, though.
Which could be the whole scam. Make the sweepstake entry include ordering of the device with the expectation that no-one actually wants the wretched thing anyway, and make your money on the restock fee. Pretty easy money.