How The ‘Bag Of Sugar' Scam Really Works

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A cruel new scam is leaving shoppers horribly disappointed at the very moment they should be enjoying a new purchase.

British shoppers who have bought high-value items such as laptops, tablets and iPhones open their package to find worthless items inside – ranging from a bag of sugar or meat pies to a lump of clay.

So why are British shoppers being left with weighty but worthless items instead of what they ordered? It's often to do with changes in returns policies on marketplaces such as Amazon, which make it far easier to return goods, online safety experts told Yahoo News.

A woman from Cornwall opened the box for a new Lenovo laptop and found three pies in the package instead, while a mother from Leeds opened a packet supposedly containing a Samsung tablet and found two packs of biscuits and a bag of sugar.

There are various reasons a package could arrive not containing the advertised goods (including couriers stealing the contents).

But increasingly in recent years, the 'refund' scam is due to resellers not checking returned packages, Bischoff explained.

So a scammer buys a laptop or other expensive item, replaces it with something weighing roughly the same, the return is accepted by the seller, and then an unwitting buyer becomes the owner of a bag of sugar or a lump of clay.

Online refunds are often processed rapidly and sometimes without checking, if the parcels appear unopened.