Very Odd
This week I received an email from HarperCollins telling me that my three shipments of books were in the mail. The problem was that (1) I had not ordered books, (2) they were being shipped to my old workplace’s defunct California address, and (3) no one at HarperCollins had any record of this shipment even though we could all track the progress of the boxes across the United States because the email contained a tracking number.
When I say this address is defunct, I mean that (1) they haven’t had an office there in ten years and (2) the company itself closed about two years ago. And when I say that no one at HarperCollins had any record of this shipment, it’s because I spent Friday on the phone with customer service trying to figure out this mystery. They had no record of any shipment to the company nor any record of my name or email address in the system, even though I had received a tracking email about my order.
It’s Sunday morning, and I still haven’t gotten a response on what is in the boxes. So let’s all take a guess because there is no right answer. After all, I will never see these books because it is going to a non-existent address in California. The boxes will either sit outside, unclaimed, until the rain molds over their contents, or the boxes will be returned to HarperCollins.
So what’s in the boxes?
- Books that should have been sent over ten years ago that mysteriously shipped this week?
- A box of fantastic new bestsellers that someone decided I must read?
- A prank by a disgruntled HarperCollins employee?
- Ghost books?
7 comments
This is so odd. So I read a news story recently about this happening where criminals were using addresses and the postal system to move drugs around the US. The story I read the home owner actually opened the box to find massive drugs and reported it to local authorities.
So it would make sense to me that an old, defunct address would be used for something like this, but how Harper Collins got involved remains a mystery.
Question: is there anyone you know in California who is close to the address? I’m wondering if they can pick up this package. Granted, given the mystery, it seems like exercising some caution would be prudent, but this is odd and I’m curious if something does arrive.
I also have a weird Harper Collins story. Several years ago, I ordered three books from them, directly from their website. Books arrived. THEN, precisely a year later, I got a shipment of the exact.same.books. I wasn’t charged for them, and there was no record of the shipment, as far as I could figure out. After two attempts to call, I finally just put the books in the Little Free Library on my street. I could hardly wait for another year to pass to see if the same thing would happen again, but it didn’t.
This is really weird. Any chance you could call the shipping company and ask where the boxes originated from? If they can’t provide that info, my guess is ghost books…
Sounds like the start of a good mystery. Odd that it happened to you, and odder still that something similar also happened to Heidi! Maybe it’s something with HarperCollins.
How are the books being sent? Can you update the delivery address in the system and have them re-routed to you? I wonder if someone bought a marketing mailing list from Harper Collins and just used their name to make it seem more legit? So strange. It would be fun to find out what is in the box. My guess is books that should have been sent before.
Is there an update to this story??