Sunday morning, while Holly Lafavers was preparing to go to church, a workwary of childbirth deposited a box of lollipops of 25 pounds in front of her building in Lexington, Ky.
And another. And then another. Soon, 22 boxes of 50,600 lollipops were stacked five boxes high in two dum-fum walls. It was at this point that Mrs. Lafavers heard what no parent wanted to hear: her child had involuntarily placed an order online.
“Mom, my dragees are there!” said her son, Liam, who came out to set up his scooter.
“I panicked,” said Ms. Lafavers, 46 years old. “I was hysterical.”
Ms. Lafavers said in an interview that Liam, 8, became familiar with Amazon and other shopping sites during the pandemic, when she regularly ordered supplies. Since then, she has sometimes let him browse the site if he keeps the articles in the cart.
But during the weekend, Liam had a lollipop launch. He told his mother that he wanted to organize a carnival for his friends, and wrongly, he said, he placed an order for nearly 70,000 pieces of candy instead of booking him.
And so the double ramparts of suction cups got up at their door, where excess electronic commerce met with their united community.
Ms. Lafavers said that she had discovered that something was not happening after a shopping trip early on Sunday when she checked her online banking balance. “It was in red,” she said.
The offensive article was a $ 4,200 Amazon load for 30 DUM-DUMS boxes. French and upset, she called Amazon, who advised her to reject the expeditions. Ms. Lafavers was able to refuse eight of the boxes, totaling 18,400 lollipops, but the 22 boxes containing 50,600 lollipops had already landed.
“My Alexa didn’t even miss to tell me that they had been delivered,” she said.
Ms. Lafavers said that Amazon then told her that she couldn’t bring the candies back for a refund because it was food. So she tried to return to the world of virtual shopping what he had unloaded on her first.
“Hi everyone! Liam ordered 30 cases of Dum-Dums and Amazon will not let me return them. Sale: $ 130. Always sealed,” she wrote on Facebook on May 4.
The post drew the attention of local news stations and the national media, highlighting the financial betrayal of online activity.
Parents have committed themselves on his Facebook page and shared solutions, such as detachment of payment methods from online accounts, the implementation of alerts for large purchases or simply the maintenance of children outside the phones. A child spent $ 980 for the virtual Roblox game currency. A 3 -year -old child playing on a phone for an airport delay spent $ 300 in films. A woman’s granddaughter spent $ 1,000 for Google Play.
“As a mom who has experienced unwanted orders, I feel your pain,” wrote a woman.
Companies offer steps on how to prevent and challenge unauthorized purchases in purchases and online games.
Roblox advises parents to use password protected purchases and call their customer service center before launching a dispute with a payment provider, which would block the reimbursement process. Epic, Fortnite manufacturers, has guarantees that include a “intention to buy” step and the purchase of cancellations.
On Apple devices and accounts, family verification parameters include checks called ASK to buy for a child’s device, or “do not allow” integrated purchases.
The Google Play purchase verification process also has additional guarantees on family accounts that worship the authorized user to make a purchase on applications for children aged 12 and under.
Amazon finally told Ms. Lafavers that it would give him a refund. In an email, the company said that it “worked directly” with it “to transform a sticky situation into something gentle”.
Wednesday, after the end of the reimbursement, Ms. Lafavers decided to give the DUM-DUMS instead of selling them. A neighbor proposed to distribute it in Halloween. A local chiropractor asked two boxes and a bank in Somerset, Ky., Said that they would have five boxes.
“I give them to the people who offered to buy them, otherwise I give them to a charitable organization or to a school or to the church,” said Ms. Lafavers. “The people I have relationships were ready to buy them to help me.”
SPANGLER CANDY CO., the company that has done DUM-DUM since 1924, invited Ms. Lafavers and Liam to visit its factory in Ohio. “We also like that so many people have jumped to offer additional cases,” said Kirk Vashaw, its managing director, in an email.
Liam’s online navigation privileges are on a break. But Ms. Lafavers said that he had also tried to find a way to recover his money, saying to his mother: “It’s good, mom, we can sell my Pokémon cards.”
