Photo courtesy of Seth Horvitz
Seth Horvitz knew there was something amiss as soon as the UPS deliveryman dropped off the long, narrow box. It was not the kind of container that holds a big flat-screen television.
“The package didn’t match the shape,” he tells DCist in a phone interview. When Horvitz saw the box, he says flagged down the UPS driver on his way out of Horvitz’s Northeast D.C. apartment building and asked if there were any other packages for him in the truck. There weren’t, the driver told Horvitz, who says he then thought the box might contain components from the Westinghouse 39-inch LED television he ordered from a merchant over Amazon.com. A spokesman for Amazon says that although the transaction was conducted through the online retail giant, it was not involved in the shipment.
“When I brought it in and opened it, I was totally shocked,” Horvitz says. And for good measure, because instead of TV cables, he discovered a Swiss-made semi-automatic rifle.
Horvitz ordered the used television from an independent reseller who conducts transactions through Amazon. He received a Sig Sauer SIG716 a 7.6 pound, 37-inch-long assault weapon. Like many people, Horvitz has ordered plenty of things off Amazon in his life. Usually, things turn out fine.
“Items get mixed up sometimes, but never on this scale,” he says. “I didn’t think I was getting into a gun/electronics dealer.”
He says the very first thing I did was to send a message to the seller. He didn’t hear back immediately. Next he called the Metropolitan Police Department, who dispatched two officers to inspect and confiscate the rifle. As weapons of that caliber are illegal in D.C., Horvitz couldn’t exactly haul it back to the nearest UPS office for a return shipment.
Horvitz says the MPD officers were kind of stunned themselves. They inspected the SIG716 and took it away. Horvitz then filed a claim with Amazon about receiving the wrong product and notified his credit-card company about getting a refund on the charge for the television that never arrived.
The other thing that has caught Horvitz completely off-guard is the reaction to his story. After the errant shipment was reported by Fox 5, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence issued a statement saying, “This mishap could have led to another tragedy.” He says that some ensuing comments by gun-rights blogs that picked up on the story mocked him for calling the police.
“It becomes emotional for gun-rights activists,” Horvitz says. But says he appreciates the absurdity of the whole situation. He just wanted to use the television set as a computer monitor. Instead, he got a lesson in buying independent merchandise from merchants that might not have their acts together, even if they conduct business over the world’s largest online retailer.
“It definitely makes me think twice about the lack of information about third-party sellers on Amazon.
Amazon says that it did not ship the product itself, and that it is investigating the situation.
