With the holiday shopping season almost here and gifts and goodies set to be flying around the country, it’s useful to know what to do if someone else’s package is delivered to you.
An estimated 2.3 billion packages will be shipped in the 2025 holiday season, according to ShipMatrix. So even if 99.99% of deliveries are done correctly, 2.3 million packages could still end up at the wrong address. That’s a non-zero chance someone else’s ugly Christmas sweater or turducken packed on dry ice will be left on your doorstep.
So what should you do if a package you didn’t order ends up in your hands?
The law is crystal clear in some situations and murky in others. It can depend on who delivered the package, what is inside and if you tried to get it in the right hands.
Is keeping a package meant for someone else a crime?
It can result in theft charges, although the specifics matter.
Receiving and taking possession of a misdelivered package are not illegal alone. But Arizona Revised Statutes 13-1802 says knowingly taking control of “lost, mislaid, or misdelivered property of another … without reasonable efforts to notify the true owner” can be considered theft and could lead to charges.
Federal law also applies, particularly when the U.S. Postal Service delivered the package. Keeping a package addressed to someone else is considered mail theft, according to the service, and is punishable by up to $250,000 in fines or up to five years in prison, according to legalclarity.org.
The federal statute does not cover deliveries made by private services such as FedEx, UPS or Amazon, but keeping such a package without trying to redirect it still violates Arizona law.
What should I do if I receive a package addressed to someone else?
First, don’t open the package, which could make it harder to return.
Second, check the intended address. You might see it was supposed to go to a neighbor and could decide to deliver it yourself.
If you don’t want to deliver it yourself, contact the service it shipped through and ask them to pick it up. Contact information is usually on the shipping label or the carrier’s website.
What happens if I can’t return the package?
If you make a reasonable effort to return the package, you might be able to keep it.
The U.S. Postal Service will return or forward packages misdelivered by its carriers. Private freight services likely will do the same, but online platforms such as Amazon using delivery contractors will not always try to collect the misdelivered item, especially if it is inexpensive. They sometimes say you can keep the item and they will ship a new one to the intended recipient.
Similarly, misdelivered meals and perishable food typically will not be picked up because of the risk of contamination while it out of the courier’s possession.
Can I keep a package addressed to me that I did not order?
Yes, but you should be careful.
If you receive a package that is addressed for you, but you didn’t order it, you have the right to keep it without paying for it. The Federal Trade Commission says when a company sends you something you didn’t order that is addressed to you, they can’t later demand you return the item or pay for it.
Why should I report a misdelivered package?
First, contacting the private shipping service, seller or the post office helps you comply with the state statute requiring “reasonable efforts” to return a misdelivered package.
It’s also important is it helps the sales platform be aware of possible brushing scams that try to fraudulently boost a seller’s profile and sometimes capture personal information about customers.
What is ‘brushing?’
Brushing is where someone ships an item to a person that did not actually order it as part of a scam to improve the seller’s rating in a platform such as Amazon.
The seller or a collaborator sets up fictitious accounts that, as far as it looks to the selling platform, are different people typically buying expensive items, such as jewelry or computers.
In the scan, the seller actually ships low-value items, such as hair ties, to the different addresses, but to the selling platform, it looks like a series of sales of the high-end items to different individuals. The operators of the fictitious accounts then leave glowing reviews as verified buyers, helping drive up the seller’s rating and success in the platform’s algorithm.
In some cases, the supposed buyer’s profile uses the name of a real person at the address where the item would be delivered.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also warned about a variation on brushing scams where the unsolicited packages contain a QR code. After scanning the code, the recipients might be prompted to provide personal or financial information or to download malicious software.
These kinds of scams can be reported to the FBI.
Amazon also has a way to report them.
Arizona Republic staff writer Laura Daniella Sepulveda contributed to this report.
Nate Trela covers trending news for the USA TODAY Network.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Can I keep package accidentally delivered to me? What Arizona law says
