A grieving mother was left distraught by Amazon after a laptop bought to plan her child’s funeral disappeared in an alleged scam – despite the website claiming to protect the purchase with a one-time password.
Clare Buchanan ordered the £800 MacBook Air the day after the death of her 11-year-old son Oliver from a brain tumour, and had planned to use it to write his funeral service at the hospice where he died.
When the laptop arrived, the courier refused to release the parcel, claiming there was a problem with the one-time password (OTP), a six-digit code that Amazon issues to customers to verify deliveries. The laptop was then recorded as delivered. Amazon refused a refund because tracking claimed it had been handed over.
“I’d ordered it to be delivered to my parents’ address where we’d been staying at the end of Oliver’s life,” said Buchanan. “I have a large funeral to plan and a eulogy to write so I wanted a lightweight laptop that I could use while sitting with him in the children’s hospice where he is staying prior to burial.
“I gave the OTP to my father while I spent the afternoon at the hospice and I duly received a text stating [the laptop] had been delivered.”
She discovered she had been left empty-handed when she returned to her parents’ house. “My father had handed over the OTP, at which point the driver said his handheld scanner wasn’t working and he would have to take the parcel back,” she said.
“It seems the driver then used the OTP to trigger the ‘delivered’ notification. My poor father is already distraught and this has just made him feel even more dreadful.”
Buchanan said Amazon refused to investigate when she complained.
“I called customer services, tweeted them and messaged them via chatbot,” she said. “The general response is that it’s been delivered and there’s nothing they can do about it. It appears that this is a known scam but Amazon do not seem to be doing anything at all to protect their customers or to amend what is obviously a highly flawed procedure.”
Amazon issued a refund and promised an investigation after Guardian Money intervened.
OTPs were launched by Amazon to provide extra security for high-value orders. Similar systems are commonly used by financial companies to verify online transactions.
However, an investigation by the consumer group Which? found that the system had failed to prevent thefts, with customers complaining that their orders were driven away or found to be swapped out after they had provided their OTP.
Which? said it had received numerous complaints from empty-handed customers who were refused refunds by Amazon because their OTP had triggered a “delivered” notification.
Guardian Money has been contacted by other customers who have experienced the same problems.
One reader said that the £470 Xbox he had ordered for Christmas had been switched for a box of Snickers. Amazon failed to refund him and successfully contested the chargeback claim he issued with his bank. Another claimed that she submitted the OTP for a £799 iPhone and received a pull-along duck. Both were refunded after contact from Guardian Money.
“Any examples of couriers apparently abusing OTPs are concerning,” said the Which? consumer law expert, Lisa Webb. “Amazon must investigate cases when consumers report them, as it’s the retailer’s responsibility to ensure shoppers receive items. Retailers should be refunding or redelivering items that go missing in transit. If they don’t, they could be breaching consumer law.”
Amazon told Guardian Money that it invested $1.2bn last year to protect customers, selling partners and itself from abuse, and that it investigated every complaint.
• This article was amended on 17 January 2024 to remove text stating that Amazon is the only courier to use an OTP system for deliveries in the UK.
