Everyone gets at least a few of their packages misdelivered and receives at least a few mis delivered packages. But depending upon what gets mis delivered the results can be anything from mildly amusing to straight up catastrophic, as in the following cases.
Heart valves—while useful—arent the go-to tools for kitchen remodeling.
Unfortunately, a Home Depot in New York City received a box full of them back in 2010. The heart valves were supposed to go to a hospital in Chicago, but somehow ended up on the Upper East Side.
“I think it’s crazy,” employee Bryan Beltrez told the press. “They should not be misdelivering such things.”
Ive received two potentially embarrassing (for them) things over the last six or so years living here.
One was a pornographic magazine for gay men and the other was cowboy and pirate sex costumes for their halloween.
It’s funny that we never really talked about it. Although I did get inspired and ordered some kinky stuff for myself and my wife following that.
Anonymous
Shipping over 600 million packages a year means that Amazon is naturally going to make a mistake every now and then, you order one CD because you’re that person who still buys CDs, and they send you two. Little things like that. Or, you could buy absolutely nothing and they send you thousands of dollars’ worth of random stuff, like they did for Robert Quinn of South London.
Quinn hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon for some time, but a computer glitch sent 51 returned packages to his home instead of the return depot.
Some of the items in Santa’s surprise drop-off included a tablet, a baby buggy, a big-screen TV, a PSP, another tablet, a bookcase, an ironing board, yet another tablet, and even a leaf blower. All in all, Quinn found himself with over $5,000 worth of high-end equipments he hadn’t asked for – all of which he got to keep for free, courtesy of a red-faced Amazon.
My parents ordered the wine for Christmas back in October and it hadn’t arrived until December. So they complained and received a box of wine the next day.
A week before Christmas another box of wine appeared! My parents called the wine company and the customer service representative said they could keep it for free!
What a great Christmas gift!
Worst time I had with these package delivery companies was when a package that was supposed to reach me at Texas State University got delivered to some girl in Ohio State University. Not only to a wrong address, but also wrong city, and WRONG STATE. I was 1300 miles away from where my package got delivered.
My correct address was on the package but the driver, being lazy, decided to dump the package at the local college instead of taking it to be shipped to the correct location.
A few months back I ordered 14 bottles of wine online. They were due to be delivered within a few days to my home address. Nothing showed up and almost a week and a half had passed, so I called the company up.
I was expecting to hear I missed the package and had not got a note. They looked it up and saw the package had been dispatched but nothing had been signed for and no note was left, so it must have been the delivery company’s mistake.
Another box of wine was shipped out and it reached me, at work this time, the next day. Conveniently they had written on the side that it was full of wine and that it was for an urgent delivery for a priority customer, making me look like a heavy drinker. My colleagues ragged on me for that the entire week.
Anyway, a week later I come out of my apartment and ran into my next door neighbor. He says,”Heya, I’ve been looking for you, a package arrived two weeks back but I’ve been on holiday since then. Wait here, I’ll go grab it for you”.
Two cases of wine for the price of one!
I had a brown box delivered one day and didn’t think twice about it because we had recently moved in and had a lot of other things delivered the same week.
When we opened it, almost a week later, we saw some foot therapy thing that came with wax blocks that you’re supposed to melt as part of some tub therapy thing. There were lots of wax blocks, someone had ordered a ton of these wax blocks. The package also had some fuzzy sleeve type things to slip over your body parts to keep the heat in once you’ve applied the wax.
The delivery company never came looking for it and we never recognized the street address. So we ended up trying to use this thing and it wasn’t the best experience to be honest.
An old tenant, who must have lived at the place where I am currently living at least 5 years ago, still gets some of his medical supplements delivered here.
Sometimes it’s viagra and other sex supplements. It’s funny but also disgusting at times.
Not a mail delivery, but a wrong wire transfer.
So my mother got a wire transfer a few years ago – a sum of 57000 (That’s $85000). We thought the bank would promptly notice and rectify, and so they did, but like three months later! We almost believed this money was ours by them. Probably the best-worst three months ever.
It turns out some people had asked for a loan and somehow they messed up the files and well, my mother got the money transfer.
This might be the worst “Delivered wrong” story.
During a recent battle in the province of Anbar, the Iraqi Air Force set out to drop food, drink, and weaponry to its besieged ground troops. Unfortunately, the pilots got confused, flew to the side of the province controlled by the enemy, ISIS group, and gave them fresh noms, throat-parching liquids, and enough ammo to last them for weeks. And the actual army got nothing.
Most of my incidents with receiving mis-delivered stuff happened at work.
I used to work for a computer shop that was a also an authorized service centre for a famous computer brand. We did a fair amount of warranty work for a number of hardware companies, so the package delivery people had a habit of delivering anything from computer companies to us, even if they were addressed elsewhere. And these software companies also had a habit of sending us stuff that was supposed to go somewhere else.
I don’t know how it was for the customers who didn’t get their parts, but we had problems getting both of these parties to take their stuff back. They would say they were issuing a pickup notice to the carrier, and never would, or they were sending us a label, but never would, etc.
So, every now and then we had a bunch of electronics piled up. I ended up with a nice set of speakers and a subwoofer after they sat in the warehouse for months. Our boss told us to “clean up the warehouse”, and all of us wound light up.
I had an issue with airport care. The power supply to our Airport Base Station died, and the only way I could get a new one was through the airport supply care, so I ordered it over the phone.
They shipped it to an old address and the people there signed for it. I was told I’d have to get it back as I technically provided this wrong address. I contacted the landlord, who in turn contacted these people, and they claimed they never received it.
After a week or so, with frequent calls, airport care determined I had provided the correct address and re-issued me a new power supply. Why those people living at my old address wanted to keep a power supply for an airport base station, I’ll never know.
Anonymous
In 2012, customers of a Monmouth County, N.J. Delta gas station had their tanks filled with jet fuel instead of gasoline due to a mistaken delivery.
Instead of zooming away, the cars stalled. The mistake was attributed to the storage facility in charge of delivering the gas. The gas station and all others that could have been affected were immediately shut down for cleaning.
One woman blamed the gas station’s name: “It was probably because it was called Delta and they thought it was Delta Airlines,”
Over the summer, hundreds of students took part in Edinburgh Playhouse’s summer stage sessions, learning valuable lessons about stage premise, enunciation, and what play house is about.
In December, the school sent out DVDs that were supposed to contain pictures and video of the kids’ experiences and performances there. What the children actually got, however, was a pornographic film specifically addressed to them, not their parents.
Though these sort of wacky misunderstandings happen only in gross-out comedies, the production company employed by the playhouse actually made hundreds of DVD copies of an epic piece of hardcore smut called “The Bondage Mistress” and then, because double-checking your work is for losers, they threw the DVDs into cases marked “Edinburgh Playhouse Summer Camp Mix” and sent them.
The staff at the playhouse claim they didn’t know they had accidentally sent children a mistress for Christmas until one of their workers sat down to watch his copy of the DVD, two days later. Or at least he told people about it two days later.
One furious dad called the film “disgusting filth” and “sexual exploitation” and said that it was “not even amateur porn.”
Some goof ups do make this world a funny place to live in. I am thinking about the kids who’d have excitedly opened the DVD and played it for family and friends.
Not really delivered but years ago I ordered an I-Bead MP3 player and it was supposed to be delivered by this some lesser known delivery service within one week.
I waited for two weeks before I gave up and contacted them, they told me to come to the depot and pick it up (are you even a delivery company?) and I should bring some ID since they’re not dropping it off at my house.
Great. I cycle there with my passport. Finally find the elusive depot and show my ID. The radio there played through 3 songs before the guy at the counter returned with a larger sack than I was expecting. I checked the address, it was correct and got a little confused. Anyway, thinking it might be a big for a small MP3 player, I opened the sack. And the product was a stinking manure sample.
Thankfully I did get my MP3 soon though.
My neighbour had not long ago sent his car out for a service, driven out on a flatbed truck and now the flatbed was back with it’s charge.
Now what kind of car gets taken for the regular service on a flatbed truck?
I answered the doorbell, looked down my driveway, and saw my neighbours Ferrari F430 on the truck, in my driveway.
Only time any supercar rubber graced my driveway. Sigh.
A woman on the northeast side of Washington D.C accidentally received a crate of 1000 bees that were supposed to go to someone with the same address—but on the southeast side of town.
Ray Noll, director of Animal Control Field Services for the Washington Humane Society, told Washington City Paper that the resident who received the bees—which were contained in a wood-and-wire box within a plastic bin—”was freaked out”. When one of the Animal Control Service employee said they don’t normally handle buzzing insects, she said, “You’re not the one with the bees on your porch!”
The bees were eventually delivered to the right person.
I used to live in an apartment complex and one of my neighbor moved out. A few days after she moved out, another couple moved in. And UPS delivered a package to the new couple that was for my old neighbor. The couple even signed for it.
Well, the old neighbor got hold of the apartment manager, got the contact information of the couple that rented her old apartment and called them. But they said they never received any package from UPS.
Then she went over to her old apartment, knocked on this couple’s door and explained that the package was a hand-sown quilt from her grandmother for her newborn baby, and it’s really important for her to find her package. She even said UPS has proof that they, the couple, signed for the package.However, this couple continued to deny receiving the package.
After months of going back and forth with the apartment owners, the couple and UPS, she ended up taking the couple to court for theft of property.
The judge sided with her. A deputy from the local police department, her and the apartment manager showed up one day and went into the couples apartment, they were not home then, and found her quilt laying right across the couples couch.
It beat anything Ive ever seen. You talk about gutsy. And definitely taught me a lesson. Now if Im expecting anything valuable from UPS or FedEx and I cant be home — I either make sure someone is there for me or call the local depot and ask that it be held for pickup.
Its not every day that a box of unordered narcotics ends up on your doorstep.
In 2014, due to an incorrectly labeled package, a delivery company delivered a box of high grade drugs to the neighbor of the intended recipient in Houston, Texas, who then alerted the local police.
Sheriffs were sent to the correct address and, upon raiding the house, found “a hodgepodge of multiple drugs and a whole bunch of guns,” .
Three suspects were taken into custody after the incident.
In 1964, Teressa Bellissimo, who along with her husband Frank co-founded the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N. Y., ordered chicken necks to make her spaghetti sauce, but chicken wings arrived instead, so she made do with them and invented the popular bar food – Buffalo Wings.
Caffeine is a drug, but sometimes, the other things we put in our coffee can be even more hazardous to our health. Like artificial sweeteners, or mountains of pure uncut cocaine.
A Berlin coffee company was ready to receive its morning delivery of delicious Brazilian beans, but when workers opened up the packages to begin the best part of waking up, they found an unexpected bonus: a completely unrequested duffel bag overstuffed with 73 pounds of cocaine worth $1.8 million, by the police’s estimate. Add a couple of cans of Red Bull and that shipment could legally be classified as a WMD.
Authorities don’t yet know who slipped it into the delivery,
nor do they know where the offending product was meant to be delivered. They only know that the beans came from Brazil and that inspections at the nearby Bremerhaven port turned up nothing suspicious. So either somebody at the port is pulling a Tony Montana or that place employed the worst inspectors. Alternatively, maybe the illegal drug industry was feeling generous (it was the season of giving, after all) and intentionally gave away those 73 pounds of love to a random stranger. We may never know the truth.