THE MYSTERIOUS THINGIES
For example, there was the time I received the beautiful bouquet of eighteen white roses with no name on the accompanying card (See post from 12/9/2019, "The Mystery of the Roses").
Then there was the time flamingos mysteriously showed up in the yards of my friends.
And I'm also behind the mystery of the bunnies that show up in my neighbors' yards every year on Easter Sunday morning (see post from 4/9/2021, "Pies, Bunnies And Christmas Breakfast").
But then there was the time when my grand daughters received an Amazon package addressed to both of them with no sender information that contained a lovely little tea set (see post from 12/31, 2014, "The Mysterious Tea Set").
The whole situation was annoying, not only that these little doo-hickies had been sent to me by mistake, but that they were such dumb, garish, useless little doo-hickies.
Especially annoying was this tooth pick dispenser thing.
And then there was the message written on the box under the thingies.
That evening I shared a text on our family thread about the mysterious thingies.
A couple of my children thought this could be some kind of scam, specifically one called "brushing," which involves an Amazon vendor hiring people called "brushers" to order the vendor's products through Amazon. The brushers then write a glowing review of the product - specified as a "verified purchase" - on Amazon and the good reviews left by "verified buyers" help sales of the product.
We figured that must be the provenance the thingies, though exactly what they were remained a mystery. We spent a good while texting back and forth, joking and musing about the mysterious thingies,
Then one of my daughters texted this photo, which she said she found from doing an online picture search:
My daughter then texted this:
Wait, I thought: Last December I ordered for myself for Christmas a Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory clock.
Definitely some kind of scam, the relatives on our text thread agreed. "Do they look cheap or expensive?" asked one.
"This ain't cheap," wrote my daughter, accompanied by a Sothby's auction price for a set the Dali cutlery:
Now the family text thread lit up with urgent advice: I needed to immediately check my credit card, my credit report, my Amazon account, my bank account. I asked the thread members if they thought I should maybe call the FBI? Just to be safe? What if I were an inadvertent dupe in a Dali smuggling scheme and someone came looking for the $61,627.54 thingies?
That was when the case broke wide open with this text from my daughter:
"The ad wasn't clear whether the pieces were authentic Dalis or replicas," my daughter explained, "but for $50 I had to give it a try."
Alas, as we learned, they were indeed copies. Though, as it turned out, not very convincing ones. A little research on our part revealed that the actual Dali Cutlery pieces were of a silvery gold, each piece intricately detailed,
...substituted their own company logo and switched out the price from 44,100GBP to $39.98:
The pieces they then sent out had barely a hint of detail, and no Dali signature.
The authentic Dalis:
...the oumytrade Dalis:
The authentic Dalis:
...the oumytrade Dalis:
And, in truth, for my daughter's fifty-dollar expenditure we we did have an evening's worth of fun, winding up with lots of laughter when she finally sprung the joke and the story of how she'd been hustled.
We noted that this was kind of like that story from a few years ago when a (supposed) art restorer promised this:
And delivered this:
In short: my daughter was promised by oumytrade that her mother would receive this:
I'm still laughing. But I'm sure poor Salvador Dali would be flipping in his grave.
Reference:
https://www.oumytrade.com/products/023