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Recieved a book as a gift through Amazon (fedia.io)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/books@lemmy.world
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Has anyone ever had this happen to them?

Someone who's name I never heard of sent me a book as a gift. The book is about 200 pages, but the content could have easily fit in 100 pages or less. Also, page 3 says "printed in the USA", but the last page says "printed in Germany by Amazon distribution". The text is very generic self help stuff. My conclusion is this book was probably written by AI, and someone is sending out copies to get it to the best seller list. Holding the book doesn't justify the current price of € 46, and leafing through it doesn't give me the impression that it's dense in information, it looks to be just generic stuff.

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[–] 11 points 5 months ago (9 children)

I guess some Amazon sellers sometimes send out free stuff randomly with the intent to use the shipment to generate a fake review, or to lower their ratio of returned items. They call it "brushing".

Seems a bit silly to me: if someone is in a position to post fake Amazon reviews in your name, shouldn't they be able to do a lot more damage? But, I suppose you would report a fraudulent order right away, but might not even notice a fraudulent review

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Amazon allows people to report those now. If you go to the support tab, theres a section on getting "free" stuff randomly from Amazon stores like what you are describing.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    Found it, but the reporting page specifically mentions it should be sent by a store, and not be a gift. To be clear, someone named "Latwan Estrella" sent me the book as a gift about three weeks ago (I googled that name, no hits). I reported that I recieved a package I didn't order to Amazon, but never heard back from them, they were supposed to respond within 10 days. So this morning I decided to open the package, and inside was this book with a note saying I recieved it as a gift.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    A couple of questions:

    1. Is Latwan Estrella an anagram of your name?
    2. Is this somehow a message from your future self?
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  • [–] [S] 3 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    LOL, most definitely not on both questions. Also, if I wanted a self help book on this topic I could find something better.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    But what if this was the book your future self received in their past.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    They would have, since I recieved it. The problem is, I leafed through the book, and it seems to be very generic. So if future me sent it, it wouldn't be for the content. Maybe it has just the right thickness for a wonky table in my near future?

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    MAYBE its so generic because your future self encoded it. The self help is generic because its actually cipher text. And only YOU have the key. Maybe the giftee's name is the key. Hmm.

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