I just got my package of new earphones from Best Buy, and the box was fucking empty. I mean there is the box and instruction manuals and charging cable, but the actual earphones aren’t there. They’ve used Shipt (which is like a doordash but for packages) but the box was inside another layer of packaging which was supposedly sealed before the delivery person got it so I’m leaning towards it being store employee theft, or someone returned an empty box and the employees didn’t verify it.
I’ll be contacting Bestbuy and Credit Card issuer as soon as customer support hours start.
I’ve literally never lost a package, I’m just so, annoyed. The money will probably be back, but like dude I just wanna listen to some music. Ugh… I guess phone speakers will have to do for now.
PSA: Record a video when opening packages just in case you need to file a dispute. I didn’t but I don’t think there’s gonna be an issue since these things rarely happen to me and disputes are rarely filed.
So have you ever been defrauded?
My first time was a long time ago at CompUSA (RIP). I purchased a joystick (like for flight sims) took it home, and found only the heavy power brick in the box. It took me at least 45 minutes of arguing at the store to get them to give me a replacement. Eventually I had to get a new box from their shelf and show them there was no plastic tape seal thing on new boxes to demonstrate that mine likely didn’t have one when I bought it either.
I’ve also had brand name micro SD cards from Amazon several years ago when things had just started to go down hill there. They had their capacity faked despite the packaging and seller looking legitimate. It may have been when they had “fulfilled by amazon” meant Amazon just treated all stock like Amazon’s general stock. If I sold a widget via Amazon stored in a Chicago warehouse and a fraud sold the same widget stored in a warehouse in NY, a NYC customer could order the widget from my store page and Amazon would just ship the one in NY because it was closer to the buyer and cheaper for Amazon to ship. I’d get a fraud complaint even though it wasn’t my product that was fraudulent.
Maybe 5-10 years ago someone used my credit card number, in a shopping center I frequent, to make a bunch of purchases at stores I’ve never visited (women’s fashion accessories). I reported this to my credit card company and they removed the charges without any complaint. I guess they managed to get the card info and my zip from a data leak and figured purchases in my zip code would be less likely to be flagged.
I’ve sure there may have been a few times where I was none the wiser.