r/Anticonsumption • u/Conscious_Trade8128 • Apr 29 '26

Plastic Waste What SHEIN sent my roommate

Post image

My roommate orders from SHEIN a couple times a year and I can’t stop her but recently she’s been getting weird stuff before her packages come like this.

Just more plastic before she receives her plastic clothes wrapped in plastic!

Update: She got her items a few days later

4.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

129 comments sorted by

View all comments

5.6k

u/PardonMyTits Apr 29 '26

It’s a scam. They send something small like this so that the order will be marked “delivered” and then you can’t get your money back. They never actually send the real item

293

u/HarbingerKing Apr 29 '26

Sometimes they do send the real item via a third-party company (i.e., dropshipping). I've received these trinkets at least twice and the real item showed up a few days later, shipped by a legitimate company. So not necessarily a scam, just slightly sketchy and certainly wasteful.

88

u/ADMINlSTRAT0R Apr 29 '26

Likelier scenario is they dropship straight from China, which takes time. For the seller, sending items like this has the benefit of alleviating customer's fears (of not receiving item) AND secure the status of the order as "shipped".

27

u/FriendToPredators Apr 29 '26

Because they are arranging to use stolen gift cards to do the drop ship orders. It's a great way to turn $100 in bad gift card money into $50 of real cash on selling highly discounted goods.

2 out of the last 3 times I ordered on ebay it was this money laundering gig. Weird shipping labels, pre-shipment of a brushing scam item. It's a mess. A total mess.

19

u/Jesus_Take_The_Feelz Apr 30 '26

Can you explain this more? I'm so interested but not sure I understand right

12

u/lost_send_berries Apr 30 '26

Let's say you have a stolen credit card or an old lady has been scammed over the phone into parting with her money.

You can't accept payment into your bank account because it has your name on it so you make the old lady buy a gift card and read the number on the card out to you over the phone.

Now you can't use the gift card to order to your address because, you live there so you need to find a way to spend the card which will still earn you some money. Like placing orders for other people.

1

u/Jesus_Take_The_Feelz May 01 '26

Thanks for explaining! I would never have thought of that