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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Question. Last week I ordered a keyboard (price around $120), but received two. What should I do?

Returning it would take me easily 30 minutes of work, so I decided to keep it until they start complaining.

We bought two suitcases from Amazon They shipped it to the wrong house so we never received it. We sent them an email and they refunded our money and we bought two more.

Two weeks later, our neighbor came back into town and brought us the two original suitcases that we never received.

Trying to be honest, we started a return process. But we could not get them to understand that we didn’t want a refund. We were returning a duplicate. Since either way we were going to have “free” luggage, we just kept both.

I had a similar situation with a cat-proof trashcan ordered from amazon. After they messed up the delivery and issued a refund I got it from brick and mortar. Two weeks later it shows up on my doorstep.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Now I have a cat-proof recycling bin.

Similar thing happened to me a couple of years ago with a 3D printer. Tracking showed it cross the country, get within 50 miles of my house, and then suddenly took off several states away. At that point tracking stopped updating. After waiting a while for Amazon to get past their "just wait to see if it shows up" threshold, they shipped me a another printer, which arrived without trouble. Two months later the original printer randomly showed up one day. I contacted support but they couldn't understand what I was talking about. After wasting a bunch of my time and their time, it seemed pointless. I didn't really need a second 3D printer but it seemed like it was going to cost both me and Amazon more time than it was worth to straighten out their mistake so I dropped the matter.

This reminds me of a similar tracking behavior I saw last year. It was both frustrating and hilarious. Item shipped via FedEx from TX to CA. I think the ETA was 5 days.

   Day 1: Left TX
   Day 2: In transit in NM
   Day 3: Arrived in Tracy,CA
   Day 11: Left Tracy and arrived in destination city
   Day 14: Left destination city
   Day 15: In transit in southern OR
   Day 18: In transit in northern OR

It hasn't been seen since. When I contacted FedEx, their investigation showed that the truck it was on was currently sitting empty in WY. No explanation for why it sat so long in Tracy, why it left the destination, or where it ended up.

So the seller shipped a replacement.

   Day 1: Left TX
   Day 2: In transit in TX
   Day 6: Arrived in Tracy
   Day 7: Left Tracy
   Day 11: Left Tracy, again
   Day 12: Left Tracy, yet again
   Day 13: Arrived in destination city
   Day 15: Delivered

I twice got things as part of an Amazon order what I didn't order. It took hours, and speaking so several supervisors to get them to take back the extra stuff, and that no, I wouldn't "just keep" large metal pipes.

Amazon now has an option on their return reason: 'received extra items'

Depends on the scale/size of the merchant. For some it's more hassle that it's worth to try and get it back. Chances are they won't bother.

I received two motherboards from Newegg recently. Because of a screw up in shipping, my first motherboard didn't look like it was ever going to show up, so they send me another one. A week later, the first one did show up. I contacted them and they definitely wanted one back, seemed genuinely happy I contacted them about it. They sent me a return label and it went off back to them that day.

My American law, you're entitled to keep it with no extra payment.

When this happens to me, I tell the retailer that if they want to schedule a pickup at my address, I'll happily hand it to the driver, but I'm not going out of my way to fix their mistake.

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