Mistaken Delivery

[SHADOWFOX]

You mentioned that there was an invoice inside the package. Did the invoice happen to contain the name of the individual if so you might want to contact or advise buy.com

If it has your name in it, check your credit card statement set up with buy.com and make sure that you were not billed for it.

If all else fails, you can mark the package return to sender.

[LCHIEN]

I'd like to amend my suggestions after thinking about it a bit more. There are moral and legal issues.
Two things you did not state were (1) was the package addressed to you by name or to someone else by name at your address. (2) what is the approx value of the item

The unsolicited goods acts (apprently by states here in the US but a national law in the UK and Aus) was clearly enacted to prevent unscrupulous businesses from sending you items and then billing you for them.

If the package was addressed to JOhn Doe at your address, then there was clearly an unintentional mistake make in which case reasonable effort should be made to return it to the sender/recipient. for example if John Doe's was known to be your neighbor and his address was different from yours by a digit then clearly you should bring it over to him. In fact, you could have violated laws by opening the package.

If the package was addressed to you then there still may be an issue of an inadvertant error in the data base or something, BUY.COM should bear the costs of putting it right (e.g. paying for return shipping and maybe giving you a discount coupon in exchange for your trouble), but in this case I think it would be benficial to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Now if you make three or four good faith efforts to allow them to put things right and they refuse to do so then you are probably right in telling them if they fail to take action then you will consider the item a gift, e.g. usolicited goods.

Some on-line sellers do make a concerted effort to have as few live persons in the loop as possible, so automated responses may or may not count.

Finally there is the valus of the object... relative to the effort to return it, is it worth their and your efforts? Under $20 I'd say it's a fughedaboudit item.

[Pappy]

Several years ago I bought my wife an angel doll from Franklin Mint and gave it to her for her birthday. I had had it deilvered to my office and about a week later my clerk told me a package had been delivered and was in my office. I called Franklin Mint and told them I had received a second doll in error. The young lady checked my account and told me they had only shipped one to me. When I told her one had been on display in my house for a week and another one, in the box, was sitting in front of me on my desk she said I must be mistaken. Her computer showed everything that was ordered or shipped under my account for the past 2 years and only one doll was shipped.

I thanked her for her time. That doll is still pristine and in the original box.

Who was I to argue with her. She had a computer and all I had was a pair of eyes looking at a doll that didn't exist!