Unsolicited Amazon 'gift'

[titchy]

Help! Teenage DS has broken rule 1 of the Internet and stupidly given out our address to someone he's been playing a particular game online with for a few years. This chap has now sent him something worth around £100 from Amazon completely out of the blue and ds wants to send it back.

I may be being slightly hysterical but this could be grooming behaviour and I don't particularly want ds to simply ask for his address to send it back. I want Amazon to do that. But they won't - citing data protection and the fact that they don't deliver stuff back to people without their permission (but they can send unwanted stuff to us).

Amazon will let me send to their returns depot and give me the cash but I don't want the cash either obviously.

Any thoughts on what to do next regarding the parcel and do I report to CEOPS?

What do you know about the sender? Is it an adult or another teen / child?

Not much A young adult apparently. Few years older than ds who is 16.

Why can you not just return it to Amazon?

You can return it to Amazon and they will refund the sender, you won't get any cash back.

surely if you return it, then the original purchaser will be refunded??

how will they give you the cash? thats not how it works

I assumed they'd refund the sender as well. But they don't. They give the recipient an Amazon gift card to the value of the unwanted goods without ever telling the purchaser (which is useful to know if Great Aunt Edna sends you a toaster you don't want but not great if you're the victim of a stalker...

See the section under 'Note' here:

Amazon

I would be inclined to give it to charity and send the bloke a message (from you) making it clear that he is not to contact yiur DS again and that you are planning on discussing his behaviour with the police.

I didn't realise that re gifts!

I would personally send the person a message stating that the gift has been given to charity and not to contact your DS again. I don't know if I would also contact the police.

If he’s anything like my son and into online gaming, could it be a gift that enables online gaming to a higher capacity?

I know that my son spent years with a fellow online friend wishing they had better tech as they couldn’t play multiplayer games properly. There was too much lag on the out of date systems his friend used.

I could well imagine if my son (17) was earning that he’d want to upgrade a friends computer console to enable good graphics and eliminate lag on a game they really enjoyed together.

I monitor my son by getting him to play the online games on loudspeaker. I can listen to the conversations should I wish. It keeps it open. He also talks frequently to me about his online friends.

I do, however, understand your concerns. I am also making the assumption it was a piece of tech to help upgrade in some way.

I don't see why you are blaming Amazon here or saying they have sent you unwanted stuff, it's not their fault! No company would give you the address of the person who ordered it.

Your DS is also at fault - as you are well aware and admit - for giving out his address. He's probably learnt a valuable lesson from it though. What was he expecting the other player to do with the address?

Has there been any other behaviour over the years you say your DS has been playing online with the gift-giver that has given either you or your DS cause for concern?

Agree with CotswoldStrife here

Oh I agree ds has been incredibly stupid - no doubt about that at all. 'It doesn't feel like I've been groomed mum...' 'Well no it never does...'

I wouldn't expect Amazon to give me the sender's address. I would though expect them to refund their account once I'd sent the goods back to their returns depot.

It wasn't a gaming item, though was sort of a piece of tech.

Charity is a good idea thanks - I'll do that if nothing else works. I'll also get their email and see if they have an Amazon account with that email and I think I can then use that to send them a gift card for the cash value.

Need to play ds a bit carefully though - don't want him going all secretive.

Did he actually give out your address or just his amazon account/wishlist info so he could revive gifts?

Receive* !

Actual address

Thank you everyone btw.

As your son is 16 can he sort this out and learn from it?

I'm not understanding why your DS would give out your full address??

What were his reasons for doing this?

I completely appreciate your point about not making DS feel he needs to be secretive about his online friends and I think that's a good tactic even if you have to swallow your own rage in the meantime

I also asked if you knew what he thought would happen when he gave out his address - don't tell us on here if it's outing - but has he told you?