A 79-year-old Illinois woman has had more than 100 Amazon packages delivered to her home over the past year. Just one problem: she didn’t order them. In fact, she doesn’t even have an Amazon account.
Pat Hurley, who lives in Elgin, recently reached out to ABC 7 News in Chicago for help with the unwanted Amazon deliveries.
The fact that the labels on the packages bear someone else’s name, but have her address on them, has caused her particular distress. The name on the packages is also unknown to anyone in her neighborhood.
“If somebody’s going to show up, I’m disabled, alone in the house,” Hurley said. “And all this is happening. I’m getting a little nervous. You know, I mean, you don’t know what’s going on in this world.”
Repeated attempts to sort things out with Amazon were unsuccessful
Her son said they reported the mysterious package deliveries to Amazon last year, but were told to just keep them. However, on some days, his mom would receive up to 20 packages, some weighing over 60 pounds.
“It became every other day we were coming over here with a dolly, just moving off the front porch again, back into the garage,” he said.
He said they tried donating the packages, which appear to be art supplies, to local schools and charities, but were turned down.
Later, Amazon told them to get the shipping codes off of each box, file a claim for each one, and then attempt to return them. That’s when they decided to seek help elsewhere.
When ABC 7 News reached out to Amazon, the company wouldn’t say if the packages were being delivered to the woman’s home as part of some sort of scam.
“We’ve reached out and apologized to Brian and his mother for this experience,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “We’re investigating and working toward a long-term resolution to prevent this from happening again.”
Recently, an Amazon driver finally came to her home and picked up all the unwanted packages.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened
Last year, a California woman had hundreds of Amazon packages she didn’t order delivered to her home. This went on for over a year.
Making her even more confused, all the packages contained the same contents: car seat covers. The woman, a resident of San Jose, had received so many of these Amazon packages that they were taking up half of her carport.
She too contacted Amazon repeatedly about the issue. She, too, was told by Amazon to just return the packages to the post office or Federal Express. That response didn’t fly with her either.
Eventually, after also contacting the local news, Amazon finally came and took away the packages.
Also, in 2023, a similar situation occurred for a Virginia woman who had more than 100 Amazon packages she hadn’t ordered delivered to her home. Those packages contained 1,000 headlamps for running and biking, 800 glue guns and dozens of children’s binoculars.