I normally have a folder for RFS that I will need to file Safe T claims for…when I get a refund notification, I put the email in that folder and I file the Safe-T claim once I get the order back.
I checked my folder today and noticed I still had 3 RFS emails from early August I hadn’t filed claims for. I checked the tracking and 3 said they were returned to us. HOWEVER, the tracking shows these were all delivered in completely different states. I even went to the USPS site to make sure it wasn’t just an error on Amazon’s tracking system…and these definitely were delivered to the wrong state. This is way too much of a coincidence. These also were all old orders…from like 3 months ago. I also noticed the place the returns were shipped from are not even where the buyers live. We have not actually received these orders, either…
I am thinking Amazon re-used these numbers for something else or ??
Tracking numbers are indeed often recycled by the major carriers - typically, after 120 days, although I’ve seen reports of shorter time frames being employed by some of them.
The scenario you describe would seem to smack strongly of one of three possibilities:
A) The infamous “Gift Card” scam used by some of the nefarious dropshippers.
or
B) One of the multifarious implementations of the even-more infamous “Chinese Brushing” scams.
or
C) What our friend Lake points out is an increasingly-common occurrence in eCommerce:
No, these aren’t scammers I don’t believe. Totally unrelated parties….
I know when I get a dropshipping order and none of these are them.
I suspect if I go back and look through my RFS emails that I’m going to find buyer faulted returns where this happened, too. In other words, I bet it’s a lot more than 3 orders this is happening on.
USPS takes photos of deliveries, and those photos have geolocation info, so one can file a claim, and state that the package was not delivered to the correct address.
I filed Safe T claims for all of them. I think I had 5….still have to go through buyer faulted returns to see if any of those went to the wrong address. No reply on Safe T claims yet.
I’m aware of the various generations of USPS’ MDD scanners being used for Geolocation, but I was unaware that any of them had provided ‘photo-recording’ capability.
If ‘photo-recording’ is happening, then it may be select regions on a trail basis. It might be like how some regions have Sunday deliveries of packages during the holidays and others do not.
It would not surprise me to learn of such a trial basis being conducted in our friend PacketFire’s neck o’ woods, as it is not particularly unusual for such experimentation to be conducted in areas with a large population density like The Big Apple & its conurbational environs.
