![]() They didn't have return addresses, so Nicole wasn't sure who was sending the packages. The packages Ashanté Nicole never ordered started arriving at her home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2019. Amazon and Facebook should work together to crack down on these groups, he said.Īn Amazon spokesperson said that the company analyzes more than 10 million reviews every week to try to keep fake ones from being published and that it provides details of its investigations to social media companies "so they can stop these bad actors from abusing their platforms."įor consumers, the unexpected deliveries can be jarring. Some fake reviews are also being driven by Facebook groups where sellers offer buyers money if they write positive product reviews, said McCabe. The likelihood that a consumer will buy a product that has five reviews is 270% higher than the likelihood they will buy a product with zero reviews, according to a 2017 report by Northwestern University's Spiegel Research Center. "The real losers here are the consumers who are possibly believing many of these fake positive reviews, or this artificial padding of reviews, because they might see 100 positive reviews, and then there may only be 60 or 70 of them that are legitimate," he said. He is now a consultant to sellers on the site. The harm is to people who rely on reviews when deciding on a purchase, said Chris McCabe, a former policy enforcement investigator at Amazon tasked with stopping scams and fraud. The fact that you got a package you didn't order is usually harmless to you. It violates eBay policy to send unsolicited merchandise to customers or falsify reviews and can result in eBay restricting sellers' accounts or suspending them from the site.Įxperts also say it's difficult to quantify the frequency of such scams because it can be hard for companies to know whether reviews are fake, and scams often go unreported by consumers. Amazon would not say how how many brushing scams have been found on the site or how many sellers have been removed due to these scams.Īn eBay spokesperson said in an email that brushing schemes "do not appear to be highly prevalent" on the site. "Third-party sellers are prohibited from sending unsolicited packages to customers and we take action on those who violate our policies, including withholding payments, suspending or removing selling privileges, or working with law enforcement," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email. But "the has long gone after marketers that use fake reviews," said David Vladeck, a former director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection and a law professor at Georgetown University.Īmazon says its policy prohibits sellers sending unsolicited merchandise to customers, and that sellers can be removed from the site for doing so. It's not illegal to send customers unordered merchandise. The agent looked at Blinn's account and found nothing wrong with it. She obviously didn't know about it," she said. Blinn notified Amazon of the issue, but a customer service agent "didn't really understand what I was saying. "Every two weeks.I get another package in the mail of just random stuff I never ordered," she said. Jen Blinn of Thousand Oaks, California, told CNN Business she has been receiving random packages since June, including most recently a briefcase, a backpack, a hair straightener and a coffee-cup warmer. Unsuspecting recipients have also found boxes with goods ranging from dog pooper-scoopers to power cords to soap dispensers on their doorsteps. The package alerted authorities as it was addressed to Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik's Redlands home in the 50 block of North Center Street, where pipe bombs, explosives and over 3,000 rounds of ammunition were found.'Brushing' scam: NC residents urged to not plant mystery seeds they didn't orderīut it's not just seeds. Workers at the facility self-evacuated, and operations were temporarily suspended but later resumed to normal operations. ![]() "I saw it was the shooter and wanted no part of it," she said.Įsparaza described the box to be medium-sized and employees at the facility notified authorities as a precaution.Ī bomb technician from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and other law enforcement officials investigated the package that turned out to have a few items of clothing. The package initially went out with driver Selena Esparaza until she realized to whom it was addressed and returned it to the distribution center. San Bernardino police later confirmed the package, received in the 1400 block of east Victoria Avenue from a Sears company, appeared to pose no threat. ![]() Police investigated a UPS facility in San Bernardino that received a suspicious package addressed to the alleged gunmen in Wednesday's attack.
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