Here in the States, you can go to online liquidation sites or physical stores and warehouses that have popped up to handle the influx of unclaimed or returned packages from online sales, mainly from Amazon, of course. I went to one of these stores in Vegas recently and it's a trip. There are bins of deeply discounted consumer goods, all sold for pennies on the dollar. I've even heard you can buy mystery pallets of these items. If you ever want to see the effects of late stage capitalism, these are the places. Now I'm learning that over in Germany, you can buy a mystery unclaimed package from a train station vending machine.
A redditor explains what's going on:
The packages contain returned merchandise from retailer selling on platforms like Aliexpress and Temu. It is too costly to send the merchandise back to the retailer (usually in China), so the retailer sells the mail to their 3PL (fulfillment centre) who resells it to liquidators (vending machine owner). Yes, they are sold with the shipping label on them.
[via Neatorama]
Previously: Lost and found: $200,000 in gold bars
