Because soft hearted people, or those with an overly developed sense of communal responsibility, will do just that. The tendency increases as age/isolation increase one’s time.

Store credit. The idea of getting store credits for the items did occur to me, but he Items were not really worth enough to bother.

@snytiger6 How could you get store credit for returning something you didn't buy? You did say Amazon, right? They know what you purchased, so I doubt they'd let you return some random products that weren't in your history.

@JeffMurray I never tried to return a "gift". However it does make sense that if a person doesn't like a gigt that they would be able to return it for store credit.

However, I think the push on the option to return the item, as the return option was pretty prominent in the paper with the package and in the email that followed it, that I am pretty sure they are phishing for log on information either to make mass purchases or just to steal credit card info.

One of my nephews said it might be chinese companies who send out products, so they can write positive reviews in my name. But for that they would also need my log in information.

@snytiger6 If said gift is from Amazon there should be a gift receipt. If I were Amazon, I would never accept returns of things that were not verified Amazon purchases; it opens up too many avenues for scams. Hell, they won't even accept returns of verified purchases of certain products (like Magic cards), so it's not like there isn't precedent to deny returns.

They are absolutely trying to scam info. And I'm sure it works enough that it's worth running the scam. I'm just thoroughly confused how this is a profitable scam to run because of the fact that people don't have to return anything they didn't ask for. My mom taught me that, so I'm perplexed why it's not a well known thing among the population RainManJr referenced. (She is a pretty smart cookie though.)

As for the Chinese company thing, I've wondered for a long time what the angle was on cheap goods from China. My buddy and I used to play this game where we tried to buy things on eBay from a far away in the world as possible for as cheap s we could. We'd get things shipped that we paid a penny for with free shipping. Couldn't figure out what the benefit was for the seller. One of my guesses was that the sellers just wanted a much positive feedback on the account as they could get to be able to sell an established account for way more than they spent building it up so quickly. Another guess was that the government subsidized shipping for any sales to the US in an effort to take as much money out of the US as possible.

I know that companies also try to bribe people to leave positive reviews or change bad ones they've left...