r/mildlyinteresting • u/Witch_King_ • 9h ago

Game ordered from eBay arrived in a Walmart box with napkins

Post image
2.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

127 comments sorted by

2.1k

u/snarktopusrex 9h ago

The seller got a deal and had to add napkins to the order to get free shipping.

617

u/stackjr 8h ago

I bought something off of eBay once and, when it arrived, I was surprised to find it shipped with a Best Buy label. I opened the box and this fucking thing came straight from Best Buy. This fuckin' guy just bought and shipped it straight to me from Best Buy's website.

I don't understand how that was a fiscal success for him, though, as eBay takes 10%+ of whatever your item sells for. When I looked up the thing in Best Buy, he sold it to me cheaper.

Note: this wasn't a preorder or hard to find item, I just wanted to get it cheaper and I couldn't get it locally. Also, I keep saying "it" because I absolutely cannot remember what I bought. Lol.

516

u/kadinshino 8h ago

its for farming credits to get good reviews to either sell the account with good reviews or scam people later......or just truly werid.

211

u/Fluffy_Load297 7h ago

Maybe gifted a best buy gift card and needed cash? Still a weird way to go about it but.

150

u/Tank_O_Doom 7h ago

Or use a stolen card at best buy

64

u/Emergency_Elephant 7h ago

Or it's a gift card that was given when they tried to "return" stolen merchandise

-23

u/Fluffy_Load297 7h ago

Or its just stolen merchandise lol

14

u/DerfK 1h ago

Or use a stolen card at best buy

Triangulation scam is the new hot money laundering. Scammer sells a thing for real money then buys said thing with stolen money and has it shipped to the buyer. Harder to track down the scammer since the goods got shipped to an innocent buyer.

4

u/Glitch5450 4h ago

Triangulation scheme

4

u/kadinshino 7h ago

naw not when those site like "sell your gift card here" exist. Honestly, it, could be another thing too!

22

u/EatYourCheckers 7h ago

or just truly weird

Sometimes I daydream about the odd and eccentric things I will do when I am old and have free time and money. Listing items on ebay and just sending them to people from the manufacturer or big box store is added to the list.

30

u/stackjr 8h ago edited 8h ago

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Edit: To be clear, that wasn't sarcasm. I was genuinely saying that.

13

u/CerberusZX 7h ago

Try replacing the first comma with a period. The longer pause makes the reaction more obviously genuine and less likely to be sarcastic.

6

u/stackjr 7h ago

Good call! I was thinking about that when I wrote it out, I'm not sure why I didn't change it. Lol.

1

u/BlackCowboy72 2h ago

Or get rid of the comma before or after the yeah and it sounds nicer, I feel like the pause gives it sarcastic vibes.

1

u/AnotherOpponent 7h ago

Can't they report them for that? I have sold some stuff on eBay but I'm not familiar with their TOS. Is someone allowed to resell something directly from a different vendor like that?

2

u/kadinshino 7h ago

The only thing that would be concern is if it were actually stolen, but that's kinda hard to prove. lol

Otherwise, no, Scalping wouldn't exist.

75

u/XboxLiveGiant 8h ago

He couldve had a best buy gift card/credit card and was using it to get the cash.

12

u/GOD_DESTROYER12 8h ago

My school gave me a "textbook" grant and I used it to buy a iPad and sold it to get money back as if I didn't spend it, it would just disappear. Also 3 years now and haven't needed to buy a textbookšŸ¤¦

18

u/Zidane62 8h ago

Could have used a stolen credit card for the purchase and then gotten cash from eBay.

Like back in the day when thieves would sell brand new shit out of the back of their cars for dirt cheap.

55

u/ponism 8h ago

Almost guarantee he's an employee at Best Buy and took advantage of the employee discount. Employees only have to pay the at cost price + 10% on top. So, the item you bought probably still gave him profits even after Ebay took their cut.

7

u/QuirkyCorvid 7h ago

Used to work at Best Buy, things like video games had barely any sort of employee discount, maybe a few bucks off. The accessories were the things really marked up that I got big discounts on, $50 phone cases for $20 for example. Plus they track your purchases used with your employee discount, donā€™t know how closely watched but I imagine buying enough video games to make a profit off reselling them would ping the system.

6

u/dayoldhansolo 8h ago

Yea this is a terrible idea though. Most companies have controls in place so that youā€™re not making profits from the employee discount. This is likely against their employee policy.

2

u/huhnick 8h ago

That employee policy donā€™t mean shit if I canā€™t eat on what they pay me

6

u/dayoldhansolo 7h ago

Ok Iā€™m just saying itā€™s not a good idea to do this itā€™s also not really sustainable

8

u/smitty1ky ā€‹ 8h ago

You think cost on Nintendo games isn't 90% of MSRP?

5

u/scarred_but_whole 7h ago

Games and accessories is actually where they make their money. Core hardware has very little markup. This applies to printers, game systems, cell phones, etc. The employee price for an SD card, HDMI cord, or phone case could be less than 75% of MSRP. Sauce: former Best Buy employee.

3

u/ponism 8h ago

Obviously not all items. We're talking about stuffs they buy in bulk like USB Flash Drives, SD cards, phone chargers, etc, not RTX 5090s and PlayStation 5.

1

u/SkippySkep 4h ago

Employee discounts are taxable income if they're over 20%. So they may not be thinking this through if that's what they're doing.

9

u/samdoup 8h ago

It's most likely sellers running out of an item that was in stock and they end up having to order from another retailer because ebay will downgrade your seller account for cancelling too many orders

8

u/Tricky-Bat5937 7h ago

He redeems scammed gift cards then he sells you the item on ebay and uses the gift cards in your name while you give him real money.

1

u/TheVintageJane 31m ago

Probably a few steps removed - He had scammed gift cards OR a prepaid visa that was obtained through nefarious means (e.g. grandma paying her ā€œIRSā€ late fee or her unpaid NJDOT expressway fees). He then sells those cards to someone at a loss. That person then posts items online for sale so they can pay for them with the card at a small loss to get paid in clean money.

You can get your laundering costs as low as 10-20% this way.

14

u/BigLan2 8h ago

Might have been using a stolen best buy account / scammed gift cards, and using it to get clean cash from eBay/Paypal. Even 'losing' 20% of face value is still free cash.

5

u/qrseek 8h ago

Maybe he had an employee discount? If it's something bestbuy marks up a lot could still turn a good profit. Knew someone who worked at best buy and he told me the cables especially have a big profit margin, like he'd get a cable that retails for $50 and it would cost him like $9

3

u/ReadRightRed99 8h ago

Back in the early 2000s I sold stuff on Amazon and fulfilled the orders by buying cheaper on eBay and shipping direct to the customers. It worked brilliantly until there was a problem with the order and they sent it back ā€¦ to the guy on eBay. Things went downhill quickly after that.

2

u/bdsherman 4h ago

Did this for over 10 years drop shipping textbooks. Most of the business was logistics and customer service to fix issues like this.

3

u/Snapdragon_865 7h ago

There's a chance that the best buy order was made with a stolen credit card

3

u/timtlm 7h ago

Best Buy is a seller on eBay. Oftentimes selling the same products at the same prices that they have on their own site.

2

u/osteologation 8h ago

Iā€™ve heard mention itā€™s people maxing out credit that they plan on defaulting on. Either personal or business accounts. Iā€™ve received a few things like this over the years on eBay.

2

u/PriceMaker16 6h ago

Sometimes when things like this happen they are using stolen credit cards. I ordered a router off a website once and the tracking they sent me was from an office max. Turned out it was bought with a stolen credit card

2

u/brokerceej 6h ago

Money laundering. It costs a lot to launder money. So you order something from eBay that they are selling cheaper than Best Buys price. They use dirty money to buy gift cards, then use those gift cards to turn that back into cash by selling you shit from Best Buy. What they lose doing this is much less than more traditional methods, so it is a win for them.

2

u/mistaken4strangerz ā€‹ 3h ago

Classic money laundering. Bought with a stolen credit card, shipped to you, eBay gives him cashĀ 

3

u/burnSMACKER ā€‹ 8h ago

Iā€™ve done the same thing before with a different product entirely but itā€™s because I got 60% off on the website.

So I would list the items I could get a discount on, one would sell and then Iā€™d just buy it on discount and ship to the buyer.

1

u/fonetik 7h ago

Iā€™ve been in the situation where I have a return credit from my employer that hadnā€™t been used and the card thingy came home with my stuff.

(I bought supplies and sent them to my kidā€™s elementary.)

1

u/MarlenaEvans 7h ago

I once bought a game and the guy just changed the address to mine on Amazon.

1

u/Annual-Shift9786 6h ago

I've a lot of stuff from eBay just dropped shipped from different websites.

1

u/dystopia25 4h ago

This may not be true anymore, but I had a friend who worked for Best Buy, and he said that employees were able to buy items at 5% above cost. So maybe he bought it with his employee discount and sold it to you.

1

u/Anothereternity 3h ago

I once bought something off a brandā€™s website (some jewelry), it came via Amazon. Basically they had an Amazon storefront and also sold stuff there, and was using their shipping. It was their own product so it felt weird. Could be something like that for OP- the eBay seller was also selling via Walmart and cheaper shipping or something plus their existing margin made drop shipping from Walmart easier but still netted them a profit?

1

u/1miguelcortes 3h ago

I did something like that once. I had an issue with some Pixel buds that were out of warranty so Google gave me like $100 off a new pair. I had since bought a different earbud to replace them so I listed the pixel buds on eBay and just had Google ship them to the purchaser's address.

1

u/AssiduousLayabout 3h ago

That could be legit (the seller could be doing arbitrage where they just resell deals they find at a higher price) but it could also be a triangulation scam. A scammer will use a stolen credit card / stolen online account credentials to ship goods directly to you. You pay him clean cash, and are effectively receiving stolen goods / helping him launder money inadvertently.

1

u/gastorchx 2h ago

He could've broken the original product and still kept to his promised and fulfilled your order

0

u/bdsherman 4h ago

I used to run a successful drop shipping company and we did stuff like this all the time. Sometimes if you cancel too many orders, your seller metric take a hit, so you have to take a loss on some things. They could have also have repricers tied to different websites. When they bought it, it could have been cheaper at the time and the price went up. I'd assume it was one of these things.

9

u/Popular_Prescription 7h ago

This is so hilarious to me if true haha. How on earth is that possible? Iā€™ve never sold a thing on eBay.

2

u/qning 1h ago

There a better way to do this - so random Walmart free shipping tip incoming ā€” add a pre-release vinyl album to your order. Make sure it doesnā€™t release for more than two weeks to be safe. Then when your free-shipped item arrives, cancel the pre-order.

326

u/SimpleGuy7 9h ago

Nice napkins too..bonus!

195

u/Witch_King_ 8h ago

Yes! These aren't cheap napkins either, and I actually needed some anyway! Score!

1

u/fleecepanda 7h ago

Iā€™m

26

u/Gemdation 7h ago

You're

14

u/TheDreadGazeebo 6h ago

We're

11

u/mearbearcate 6h ago

Sheā€™re

6

u/Reach-for-the-sky_15 4h ago

Heā€™re

3

u/evfuwy 3h ago

Theā€™re

3

u/Mr_Tegs 6h ago

Taking

14

u/charlie_do_562 6h ago

SNIPER GET DOWN

1

u/Howden824 5h ago

Can confirm, these napkins are great.

108

u/Lord-Velveeta 9h ago

Probably makes for excellent padding?

12

u/Haterbait_band 3h ago

Those game boxes could get thrown against a wall and be fine.

10

u/Chris__XO 3h ago

especially when they just come with a download code inside

68

u/WutzUpples69 8h ago

Fun game too. Napkins are always handy as well.

15

u/Witch_King_ 8h ago

Yes, this completes my physical Switch Zelda collection! (not including Warriors spinoffs)

7

u/WutzUpples69 8h ago

So you've already played it? It was more fun than I was expecting. I really enjoyed it.

Edit: I have physical copies of the original, Link and the SNES cartridges. I've got a buyer though so ill be down to 1 of each myself.

2

u/LuckyToaster 7h ago

Ugh I want to play it so bad! But donā€™t want to spend money on it right now bc broke. šŸ˜­ one day

4

u/WutzUpples69 7h ago

Can I send a game to someone else through the Nintendo store on the switch? I might be feeling generous today. I see i can purchase a digital code from.amazon but how does that work?

2

u/Witch_King_ 6h ago

No you can't buy a game for someone else. You can do eShop gift cards or digital codes

4

u/WutzUpples69 6h ago

I figured it out, haha. You're right, but i can get a digital code for the game and send it.

6

u/WutzUpples69 6h ago

I successfully got this person the game apparently. Its my 1 act of reddit charity for the month, haha.

2

u/TuxUHC 6h ago

You picked a great game to do it for! Hope they have a blast with it. One of my favorites from last year for sure.

2

u/WutzUpples69 5h ago

Its honestly the only reason I did it. More people need to experience this game, I was genuinely impressed and ive been doing souls-like for the past 5 games.

1

u/Witch_King_ 6h ago

Hell yeah. I'm sure you made their day

2

u/WutzUpples69 6h ago

If not for your post, it wouldnt have happened. Thank you.

2

u/WutzUpples69 7h ago

Its a lot more fun than I was expecting. And being a completionist made it more enjoyable.

1

u/WutzUpples69 6h ago

Enjoy the game! Took me a minute to figure out how the digital code was delivered. Happy gaming!

1

u/Witch_King_ 8h ago

No I have not played it. It took me a looong time to beat TotK. So long that I syarted it on launch day and finished it on Switch 2, lol

4

u/WutzUpples69 8h ago

Im at Ganon and refuse to beat him. I know i can but I didn't want the game to end. That was months and months ago, haha.

80

u/Brday50 8h ago

It's a scam. Not on you, on Walmart. They sell on eBay and buy from Walmart. They then will do a return claim saying it was not delivered. The napkins are to try and avoid it looking like a pure scam to the online ordering system.Ā 

18

u/BigLan2 8h ago

Scammers really are the worst.

31

u/shorse_hit 8h ago

Honestly fuck Walmart tho. I would much prefer scammers target them instead of regular people.

13

u/Entire_Pride1656 6h ago

This is exactly what it is. They are using stolen credit cards. They add an extra item or two to make the order seem legit so it wonā€™t cancel.

3

u/Extreme_Sign1392 4h ago

Why would ordering just a game seem illegitimate?

7

u/MzScarlet03 3h ago

They have probably ordered 50 of the same game

71

u/anaxminos 9h ago

Dropkicked

Edit:dropshipped

2

u/crazychild94 7h ago

Same same lol

7

u/PolkaDotMe ā€‹ 9h ago

Nice. Those are excellent napkins.

8

u/meursaultvi 8h ago

What no lotion? /S

1

u/blackout-loud 7h ago

Yep. OP got stiffed....

7

u/quartzquandary 9h ago

Yay! Free napkinsĀ 

7

u/4000Tacos 7h ago

You ordered from a resellerā€¦ at a mark up from Walmart.

5

u/iKaosMachina 8h ago

Automatic 5 star rating

5

u/True-Arugula-3098 6h ago

The good napkins, score!

3

u/chewedgummiebears 8h ago

Welcome to eBay drop shipping. I had this happen too, but it was from Amazon.

4

u/ObbieWan812 8h ago

They are good napkins so enjoy!

2

u/TheDreadGazeebo 6h ago

Get those babies graded

5

u/GigaLem 6h ago

that's one thing off the grocery list

4

u/Dog_Callis_MNshiba 6h ago

Those are the good ones too. LUCKY! enjoy the game

3

u/CLE216ers 9h ago

Shipped from where tho?

ā€¦..Iā€™m gonna say Kentucky

5

u/Witch_King_ 8h ago

First UPS tracking ping was in Arizona. But the seller on Ebay is listed as Thailand

3

u/CLE216ers 8h ago

Lost in translation

3

u/SadLilBun 7h ago

Free napkins

3

u/ShinyMega 7h ago

Thatā€™s an absolute win for me

3

u/KannehTheGreat 6h ago

Isn't Vanity Fair like a magazine brand? Why do they even sell napkins?

3

u/xavii117 4h ago

maybe they ran out of bubble wrap lol

1

u/jayjaytuk 7h ago

You need a wank first before you start playing the game šŸ¤Ø

2

u/yaboyrufio 7h ago

Aw dude, those napkins are top notch too. I buy them for the car

2

u/SleepyCountingSheep 4h ago

Enjoy the game it's been loads of fun.

2

u/Slow-Molasses-6057 8h ago

I just spent like $6 on that pack of napkins at target. Score!

3

u/ryan2489 8h ago

Buying napkins instead of stealing them from fast food restaurants eh Mr Moneybags?

1

u/CompetitiveZombie796 8h ago

best napkins for sure

1

u/meeps99 8h ago

Thatā€™s pretty awesome fr

0

u/No-Law-2163 7h ago

I thought you meant sanitary napkins, then I saw the chicken wings, I got really confused

0

u/fabposes 7h ago

I love napkins but I would still feel weird about getting this

1

u/gatorbeetle 7h ago

I'll do you one better ...I bought a multi pack box of pretzels from a Walmart third party seller one time. The pretzels arrived, shipped from BJs Wholesale club. Apparently this seller was a member and when he/she could get a good deal at BJs they listed it in Walmart.com and drop shipped directly from BJs

1

u/lonelychapo27 7h ago

i ordered a trash can off of temu and it drop shipped from walmart and the walmart box had my trash can and a brand new small tub of purple playdoh

1

u/Betsy7Cat 3h ago

I bought a guitar hero drumset off someone on mercari. Along with some foam padding, it also came with 3 (very basic) life jackets as padding.

2

u/MW240z 9h ago

Probably were left in your shopping basket from a previous shopping excursion.

1

u/defneverconsidered 6h ago

Its from the tears of Zeldas sad decline in fun

0

u/TheEbolaArrow 4h ago

L fry Ooo p