If you receive something in the mail by accident, you are under no obligation to return it. I would have issued a chargeback given that you never received the item you paid for.
> By law, companies can’t send unordered merchandise to you, then demand payment. That means you never have to pay for things you get but didn’t order. You also don’t have to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-bille...
> “All open orders were canceled, I just could access digital content purchased in the account. I had over $100 in my gift card balance and Amazon agreed to send me the refund, I received a check in my mailbox after 1 week,” wrote Do, who calculated that his rate of return for Amazon is about 17% — ordering 104 items and returning 18.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/if-youre-returning-a-lot-o...
First time in like 10 years I’ve had to contact support and was happy!
Amazon has many faults but returns have always worked well for me.
I guess their systems aren't quite as smooth here. I'd still be quite annoyed to have to go to UPS in my free time to return something I never ordered.
Five or more years ago I bought a kettle from Amazon and two months later it starts leaking. Turns out it's a design flaw and a lot of reviews on the kettle mentioned the same issue. I sent a support ticket and they refunded me immediately and told me I could keep the kettle.
Then last year I ordered a knife on Amazon. A month later I receive a water flosser...
I contact support (which is now next to impossible to find in the UI) and they tell me they can't refund me unless I send the item back and they also won't be sending me my actual purchase. This was during lockdown and as I do not own a printer I was not able to print out the return slip. They also refused to come and pick it up. I got nothing, not even a "we're sorry" coupon; my account is over 20 years old.
So we went from automatic refund + you get to keep the item for an issue that was not their fault to them completely fucking up my order and then making me go through hoops, spend me own money to send their mistake back to them.
The good news is that there are a lot of different and competitive online retailers around these days, and a lot of shops are now online due to Covid. So it was not very difficult for me to stop using Amazon altogether.