I remember TV ads in the 70's or maybe 80's that were PSA from the US government, where the entire message was "if you receive something unsolicited in the mail, you own it and do not owe anyone anything" They featured an Eskimo in the middle of a frozen nowhere opening a package that turns out to be an electric fan. He says "gee. Thanks!"
Like what happened to that?
I also don't know why they ran those ads. They must have been expensive (or maybe not, maybe the government back then could just commandeer them), so presumably there must have been some kind of popular scam they were trying to fight.
There used to be “gift” scams where a company would send you products unsolicited and then send you a bill for them and aggressively push you into paying.
Maybe, but why would you want to own other people’s junk? All you really “own” now is the responsibility to dispose of it. It’s not like they’re sending PS5s through the mail to random recipients, it’s usually just old shoes
This is in Canada not the US, so I don't know how laws are different.
In the US if it is addressed to you - which these seem to be - then it is yours to keep or dispose of as you will. However customs charges are not a part of law that I know anything about, that is a weird area where the law may not even be clear who owes.
Amazon often delivers a neighbor's package (neighbor lives a mile away, so not an easy delivery to make for us) to our house. However since these are address to the neighbor and just misdirected we do not own them and have to help the neighbor get them. (a few times we called amazon and they said "just keep it", then they became ours, but now the neighbor just drops by) I have updated both addresses in OSM, so hopefully this will stop, along with friends trying to visit us actually getting to our house.
> However customs charges are not a part of law that I know anything about, (..)
I'm no lawyer, but afaik customs charges are owed by party that does the importing.
This may be eg. Amazon's customer, with Amazon just doing the warehouse/shipping part. It may also be that Amazon imports on customer's behalf, or does the importing itself.
Either way, woman in the article would not be liable for customs duties (or any other shipping charges / fees for that matter), because she's not Amazon's customer here.
She didn't ask Amazon to import anything on her behalf. Or arranged import herself using Amazon. Yeah, her name may be on the label. Yeah, she may have a (dormant) account with Amazon. But for all those packages mentioned in the article, there's no legal agreement between her & Amazon. Or between her & original seller. Or between her & shipper that brought the goods across international border. So how on earth would she be liable for custom charges for "importing" anything? She didn't.
Legally speaking, that would leave her as innocent bystander, that just happens to be where delivery person dumped a package.
In her shoes (no pun intended ;-), I'd just let this go to court & see judge move the charges to Amazon. Maybe Amazon would fix the problem if it turns into a recurring-costs issue.
But both Amazon and UPS or FedEx will still claim that she owes them money, which if she simply ignores it results in material damages to her credit, which can F up everything else in your life.
That damage itself might give her some weight in court but that is it's own whole 2nd career just pursuing that which is unreasonable to inflict on someone.
To get justice requires several thousand in lawyer fees in the best case, all for what looks like $100.
If she owed millions a lawyer would be worth it and would probably get lawyer fees. However this looks more like a case where courts will get mad about wasting their time.
"if you receive a phone call and the number is not in your contacts, do not pick up. listen to their voice mail, or make your voice mail message 'please send me a text' and wait for a text"
"if you receive a text message / email from anyone and it has a link in it, don't click it"
the administration at school asked us to join a whatsapp room for those kinds of comms, and they DM from that for anything specific
it's a cute solution, made me think of my school back-in-the-day having a basic php-type forum for snow days / announcements etc, always wanted to add DMs and notifications to that...
I'm curious what locale you're in and how popular WhatsApp is there. I feel some sort of way about having to make a WhatsApp account for this sort of communication, over, say, a phone call, text message, or email
i'm in NYC, but yea that was when i set up a Whatsapp account. i've heard of it before but all my friends are either on SMS/group chats or insta
i think their main use was automating reminders and alerts, since they probably couldnt find a way to blast SMSs to people without it being flagged eventually as spam
Public Service Announcements are often aired either when someone hasn't paid for an ad for that spot, they want to be able to say they are serving the public (since the airwaves are theoretically public, broadcast stations have to theoretically serve the public good), or someone actually did pay for them
Anyway, in other articles similar to this that were in the USA (where the law about not having to pay for unsolicited packages applies) the people were getting several packages every day (If I recall it was dozens). So getting one or two things you didn't ask for would be fun, getting several of them every day would not.
Like what happened to that?
I also don't know why they ran those ads. They must have been expensive (or maybe not, maybe the government back then could just commandeer them), so presumably there must have been some kind of popular scam they were trying to fight.