Some people dream of the convenience of Amazon delivery—prime perks, packages at your doorstep, maybe even the gentle thump of cardboard signaling a new gadget’s arrival. But for one San Jose woman, the experience has been less “digital shopper’s paradise” and more “live-in warehouse worker.” What happens when your front yard, driveway, and daily routine are commandeered by a torrent of unwanted boxes—each one not an order fulfilled, but a mistake, multiplied?

A Stoop-Burying Situation

The saga, outlined in UPI’s reporting, is at once both simple and confounding. The California resident, referred to as Kay in media accounts, has been on the receiving end of hundreds of Amazon packages—faux-leather car seat covers, specifically—for over a year. Each package, UPI notes, originated from the Chinese Amazon seller Liusandedian, which appears to have listed Kay’s San Jose address as the official U.S. returns destination for unhappy customers.

The result is a scene that ABC 7 described as chest-high box piles filling her driveway, making parking impossible. Her attempts to enter her home with her 88-year-old mother in tow often require her to part a sea of cardboard just to reach the front door, the New York Post observes. At first, a single mistaken package seemed like a blip; more followed; and eventually, hundreds turned up, clogging every available outdoor space.

Kay shared with ABC 7: “It’s just been another form of hell.” The sheer volume forced her to stack boxes in the driveway and sometimes on the stoop itself, effectively transforming her home into an unwitting Amazon depot.

How a Return Policy Can Go Wrong

The endless cascade of boxes traces back, as detailed by the New York Post, to Liusandedian’s decision to use Kay’s private residence to meet Amazon’s policy for international sellers. According to both the New York Post and UPI, Amazon requires such sellers either to list a valid U.S. address for returns, provide a pre-paid shipping label, or issue refunds with no return required. If sellers fail to comply within two days of a customer’s request, Amazon’s rules allow for the buyer to be refunded and the seller billed for the return.

Yet, in Kay’s case, Liusandedian sidestepped these requirements by listing an address that didn’t belong to them—a detail ABC 7 highlighted in their coverage and confirmed by UPI’s review of Amazon’s terms. With the seat covers themselves generating complaints about ill fit and unrefunded returns (as per UPI’s look at the seller’s review history), disappointed customers across the country began shipping their rejects not to a distant showroom, but to Kay’s unsuspecting doorstep.

A Customer Service Loop That Never Ends

Attempts to resolve the issue—with the expectation that Amazon’s famed logistical prowess would swoop in and clear things up—proved less fruitful than one might expect. Kay told ABC 7 (as described in the New York Post report) that she filed at least six different complaint tickets; after each, she received reassurances that the problem would quickly be solved: “Every time I was absolutely assured this will stop. ‘You won’t get any more of these packages, you’ll hear from us in 24, 48 hours.’”

Instead, packages continued to pile up for months. Kay recounted, via Hollywood Unlocked’s summary of her story, that Amazon eventually sent her a $100 gift card and, at one point, suggested she either donate or dispose of the packages herself. Amazon denied telling her to handle the parcels on her own, according to statements referenced in the New York Post, but provided little practical assistance until the media spotlight intensified.

It took a visit from company representatives—arranged this past week and confirmed by Amazon in statements to reporters—to finally begin removing the mountain of unwanted returns. Amazon explained, as the Post relayed, “We’ve apologized to the customer and are working directly with her to pick up any packages while taking steps to permanently resolve this issue.” The company’s assurance came only after considerable delay and the intervention of local news.

When Your Address Is Co-Opted

This saga might sound unique, but Kay is hardly the first accidental participant in a global-scale logistics mishap. UPI documents cases reminiscent of her ordeal: John DeFiore of Woodside, California, experienced a similar wave of mysterious Amazon packages last year—prompting speculation that he, too, became an unwilling middleman for a vendor’s inventory shuffle. In Canada, Joelle Angleheart received over 1,000 unsolicited condoms and a $500 charge as part of an apparent brushing scam; and Cindy Smith in Virginia found more than 100 Amazon packages delivered to her home when a vendor used her address to offload unsold stock. Each episode, as noted by UPI, reveals just how easily a consumer can be swept up in the errant flows of international e-commerce.

The New York Post, in its review of Amazon’s return policies, points out that while the company does have safeguards, enforcement isn’t always immediate or effective. When foreign sellers input return addresses, Amazon’s system may not always verify the destination’s legitimacy before millions of buyers click “return” and generate a logistical headache for some hapless third party.

Irony by the Truckload

There’s a certain irony, almost poetic, in the idea that all of Amazon’s technological sophistication—algorithms, tracking numbers, smart speakers—cannot always overcome a basic clerical error or the intentions of a corner-cutting seller. As Hollywood Unlocked puts it, Kay’s life was “turned upside down” by a chain of events hardly anyone would expect when signing for a single mistaken package.

Even after repeated appeals and a lengthening case history, Kay’s main point of contact was an endless parade of boxes and templated responses. It took an elevated dose of public exposure before Amazon finally fulfilled what so many customers expect from the company: actual resolution.

And as UPI catalogs, Kay’s case is just one among many instances where the lines between shopper, shipper, and depot become strangely blurred. If the default solution to global returns is “pick a household, any household,” how many other would-be fulfillment centers are waiting quietly behind mountains of packages, still hoping their ticket gets the right attention?

How Much Convenience Is Too Much?

In the rush for seamless online commerce, it turns out the errors can be as spectacular as the efficiency. A single misapplied address field—left unchecked—can upend daily life and render a driveway unusable for a year. In Kay’s story, as told across UPI, Hollywood Unlocked, and the New York Post, the portrait is equal parts farce and cautionary tale.

After all, not everyone dreams of being the center of the shipping universe, especially when the universe seems to have lost its sense of direction. Is it a fluke of the modern era, or just an underappreciated cost of doing business at the scale of Amazon? Perhaps the next time your order lands right on your doorstep, it’s worth sparing a thought for the person who—through no fault or order of their own—is living at the intersection of convenience and chaos.