In the Pre-Covid Age that scam was pretty common in NYC, too. Usually it's someone dressed as a Buddhist monk in a tourist area like Times Square who will walk up to you and press a charm into your hand, then ask for payment. This happened to me when I first moved here years ago. I wasn't sure what was happening so I thanked him and kept walking, thinking it was some kind of religious proselytizing thing. He came after me and angrily demanded money, so I handed the charm back and left.

Here's an article from a few years ago about these fake monks being a nuisance on the High Line park: https://gothamist.com/news/the-high-line-is-struggling-with-...

My policy is to never take anything from any person on the street. Flyers, comic club tickets, CDs, cans of soda, I don't want the interaction.

It happens in every tourist city, I experienced roses in Paris, bracelets in Madrid, Donations in Berlin.

I had a similar scam happen to me in Istanbul:

A shoeshiner would walk in front of you, 'accidentally' drop their brush. As a decent human you pick it up and hand it to them.

Then the guy insists to give you a 'free' shoe shine. After he's done, he demands payment.

The first time that happened to me, the perpetrator ruined my suede shoes. (I didn't even mind losing the few dollars for the unplanned shine otherwise..) A few days later, on the second time I didn't pick up the brush.

There are different rules for people who have ongoing relationships with companies, mostly so that one party doesn't profit from an obvious mistake.

For instance, say you are a store that orders a 1/2 pallet of coke products every week. Then one week the driver leaves a full pallet by accident. Do you get that extra pallet for free? What if you forget to place the order, but the company for whatever reason sends the usual 1/2 pallet anyway? Should you have to pay for that delivery if you use it? These preexisting relationships create situations different than the mystery package on the doorstep.

You’ll have to look into it some more if you’re interested, but I expect this mostly pertains to Americans receiving mail or packages at their homes.

It may be the case that a supplier who delivers something you didn’t request (in your case here) can’t make you pay, but they’d probably terminate any relationship with you.

So I’m only really going off of what the FTC says. In a case of an existing relationship if Amazon Subscribe and Save sends me an extra unit, then no I don’t have to pay for that. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been buying from them in the past.

UCC - § 2-606. What Constitutes Acceptance of Goods.

"(1) Acceptance of goods occurs when the buyer (c) does any act inconsistent with the seller's ownership; but if such act is wrongful as against the seller it is an acceptance only if ratified by him."

UCC isn't law in every US state, but is common.

Accepted as meeting the seller's obligation under the contract[1]. It's not saying that a buyer incurs new contractual obligations simply by accepting delivery of goods that weren't part of their original contract.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-601

The false delivery is offer, making the recipiant a party to the new contract which they acc2pt by taking the goods.

Are you referring to this in an individual customer aspect? Because it seems that the FTC states quite clearly this is not the case. If a company sends you something you didn't ask for and it's addressed to you, you get to keep it as a free gift. The FTC even uses the exact language "free gift".

This may change somewhat if it is a business transaction, but I think it's quite clear if you get a package addressed to you that you didn't order, there's no contractual obligation.

As an example, if you have ever worked in retail sometimes you get truck shipments of things and there can be extra items you didn't order. Maybe the delivery driver said "hey this was sent to you". Accepting delivery of that doesn't mean you have to pay for it.

Business to business transactions have different rules than when an end consumer is involved, usually, because of the asymmetry. Businesses typically have orders of magnitude more cash than the average consumer, so forcing them to lose a few thousand dollars to get their act together is nothing, whereas it could be a disaster for a private person.

Seems like the best option is probably to accept the parcel, then notify the sending company (or authorities, as appropriate) of the problem, and if they request you return it, you can politely say no and cite the law.

I would do this, with the understanding that A) If it's illegal (drugs) or stolen goods, the police should come take it off your hands, and B) while the company in question may not be able to charge you, they might have other ways to "incentivize" you to return it.

E.g. if it's Amazon they might cancel your account and blacklist you. Depending on the value of the item (and how much use you can get out of it), it may be easier to return it than to not use Amazon if you do often, or if you use Prime and/or Prime video/music, or worst case, your name is the main one on the AWS account for your business.

I would gladly return some Google store pixel phone if it meant I didn't have to worry about my Gmail account being locked, and all the problems that would cause me (and yes, this is a good reason for me to have a different email).

I feel like Amazon customer service has been known to be pretty generous about stuff like this. They really want your future business.

I once ordered 5 stools, and they delivered 25. It wasn't a scam, it was a genuine dispatching mistake on Amazon's part. I let them know, and their response was to just keep or "dispose" of the extra stools.

(I ended up donating them to a local piano teacher.)

So many questions...

Did you order 5 piano stools? I have 2 grand pianos, a clavichord, and about 30 electronic keyboards and I still only have 3 piano seats (1 bench, 1 stool, 1 drum throne). So now I have to know what you used those 5 stools for ;)

Second... how long did it take you to find 20 piano stool recipients? And how did you get the message across? Every time I try something like that I get treated like a scam artist and lose interest in helping.

They were normal stackable circular wooden stools, not piano stools. I offered them on Facebook Marketplace and this piano teacher responded saying they needed extra seating for recitals and could use the stools. That seemed the most worthy cause I saw in the first 24 hours so I give away the 20 extra stools to that teacher.

(Incidentally, I do play piano, but the 5 stools I ordered weren't intended for piano use on my part, I was just using them for overflow seating for friend gatherings.)

Ah, thanks for solving that mystery! I can sleep now

Seems like Best Buy would be on the hook. Your address isn't the one associated with the stolen credit card but they accepted it as payment anyway. If the crook marked it as a gift, using the correct address as the payment address and your address as the shipping address, then it does get a bit murky since you were sent an unsolicited "stolen" package. Then it becomes a question of if the laptop is considered stolen or is it considered legally purchased with an illegal credit card transaction. If this was all done with stolen cash, I doubt the laptop would be considered stolen (but I'm not a lawyer so maybe it would be). With a stolen credit card it becomes a much more interesting legal question.

The unwanted bracelet/flower thing happens in South America too though usually with stickers or a small food item like gum or candy. The grifter will hand them out to an entire group and then ask for payment, at which point several people will already have eaten the food item or peeled off the sticker. If you refuse the item or return it in its original state, they usually don't hassle you about it. They rely on the gap of time between handing out the item to the first person and the last person to create an indebtedness that too small for you to make a fuss about paying.

> Seems like Best Buy would be on the hook. Your address isn't the one associated with the stolen credit card but they accepted it as payment anyway.

The funny thing about Best Buy is that they refuse to ship packages to known mail forwarders, even if my card's mailing address matches said mail forwarder.

I find it interesting that receiving unsolicited goods, it's fine to keep them but when unsolicited money appears (due to a bank error or similar), it needs to be paid back.

I guess that's because money is more fungible and doesn't spoil?

And it's also more farfetched to assume that a company would hand out free money without any explanation as swag?

This is not legal advice.

WRT receiving stolen property... typical remedy is to either simply return the item of pay for replacement value.

So, in a worst case, you could probably hold on to it for at least 2 years [1].

[1] - I am not a lawyer. Just someone who has done a lot of legal docs that had to get approved and longtime hobbyist. Anyway, 2 years is the cut off for most civil tort claims but one may want to look into and consider the statute of limitations for conversion as a criminal act.

The 'give and then ask for payment' thing is nothing new. I've had musicians attempt to do so in parking lots in the past, back when CDs were a thing people burned.

Anyway, back to original point... Previous contact could matter THEORETICALLY if it comes to acting in good faith. I.e. if you have a prior relationship with a company, and get an invoice with product and don't even ask the company WTF is up... that COULD be used against you. Would a company do so? IDK. Probably wouldn't be good for PR. Shitty analogy but even the worst Porn Billers do for fraudulent (i.e. customer legitimately paid but balked after) charge backs is typically deny the charge back and blacklist the CC and/or customer.

> Not sure why previous contact with a company matters?

That was mentioned in the article, but the article was from the BBC, so there might be some differences in laws.

I've lost my cool at them a couple times. Then you walk around feeling shitty for the next hour because they're usually poor and/or migrants and probably aren't doing it for fun.

There is another scam I've seen in Australia where companies send out invoices for domains that you own. Except it's an inflated bill from a different company than the domain is currently registered with. Very dodgy.

I've gotten those too. The letters/emails are carefully worded so the subject screams "Pending domain registration!" to make you think it's your actual domain expiring, but the small print says that the service they offer is "registering" your domain in some random "world business directory". This way it's not an outright scam, in that they do render a (completely useless) service in exchange for your money, but of course they hope that the random admin/manager who sees the "bill" won't realize the difference and will pay up.

> scams in Europe where someone will grab your hand and put a bracelet on or put a flower in your hair or something and demand payment

This used to be commonplace in the US, particularly in airports, in the 70s. It's the source of a gag in the movie Airplane (or one of those comedies). I don't know why it faded out.

Probably time, place, and manner regulations for expression in airports.

https://www.lawa.org/news-releases/2002/news-release-5

(very many U.S. airports now have free expression booths requiring a permit, and forbid some kinds of expressive conduct or solicitation elsewhere in the airport, which I think the courts are OK with)

Technically that doesn't say whether you can keep the goods, just whether you can be made to pay for them.

Take a look at the link. But to answer this point:

“ No. If you receive merchandise that you didn’t order, you have a legal right to keep it as a free gift.”