There are many cases of people getting shipped drugs and then having the police called on them once the package arrives. It could happen to anyone really. It is also fairly common that people ship drugs to anti-drug politicians.
I had an interesting experience recently. I ordered a cheap $20 multimeter from Amazon (which was highly rated on EEVblog), which was shipped from China. Interestingly, the Chinese seller shipped me a single little worthless plastic packet of heat-shrink remote control covers (which somewhat humorously I can imagine totally being a thing in Asia, heat-shrink-wrapping all the remotes in plastic, sort of like a couch in plastic). This was what the tracking number package was for, and so I immediately hit my bookmark to chat with an Amazon rep to report fraud. I went through all the motions, they refunded me the amount, I left a negative review. But then that night, I got an email from the seller saying "That was your free gift, the multimeter should be there soon" and indeed, the actual multimeter showed up the next day, albeit with another tracking number. The multimeter was definitely shipped from China the same as the garbage package (via epacket, the subsidized, dirt cheap, glacially slow shipping method), so the seller had to have shipped the stupid garbage package at around the same time as the actual product I ordered. Other reviews mentioned the exact same thing ("They sent me garbage, but I got the thing in another package").
I've spent time thinking about what kind of fraud they're committing, because it doesn't make sense to me why they would send the garbage package with the tracking number from my order -- which screams fraud -- but then also send me the actual thing I ordered. They're sending two packages to the same address, but it doesn't make sense why, since they're obviously not committing the most straightforward kind of fraud ("We shipped the item, you can see the tracking number", which incidentally, only works on eBay and not Amazon).
Well.. this story directly provides an answer (potentially) -they get an additional marginal ranking benefit inside some market appraisal score because they double their international successful completion count, for low marginal cost of posting negligible weight content to you successfully. The benefit to them is fraud, but not against you: its against the ranking engine inside some digital marketplace like alibaba. You are an unrelated third party who validates (by accepting) delivery. Since you don't know if the package is shrinkwrap "free gift" or the $20 meter, you accept. Are you willing to monty-hall reject the random package :-)
Why couldn't they just say that the purchase of a multimeter includes a free gift that will be shipped independently, and then ship the multimeter with the regular tracking and the free gift later using whatever economies of scale you are proposing?
So if I understand this right, they are creating a fake account on some other site (aliexpress, etc...) with his address attached. And then they ship the 'gift' from the Amazon tracking number, so that he is more likely to accept that package, and then ship the multimeter from the fake account tracking number, allowing them to leave themselves a positive review on that site.
I always suspected something was going on with the aliexpress ratings. If you look at the reviews it is a lot of one liners like 'i got the item as described!' with a 5 star rating.
This is the most convoluted thing I've had to think through in awhile.
Jeez. Honestly, I mostly ignore reviews on Chinese listing sites unless they're low. It's all about two things:
1. Is the price in line with other listings? From both directions?
2. How many people have ordered it in the past 90 days?
Sometimes that does mean taking a risk with specialty items, or foregoing them. But hey, if it's a critical application I'm not going to source it from sketchy international cheap-o listings.
My hypothesis: Suppliers of goods rank by satisfaction, the web search pages show them first. Front page ranking is the endgame: nobody goes to the second rank. Completed sales. foreign delivery sales rank higher than domestic. So a seller who can make a real sale, and couple into it a fake gift as a satisfied sale overseas gets a cheap 2x legup in the ranking. They sort higher, therefore they get more primary sales. Therefore they make more money.
It could be more cost effective when the packages are shipped separately. The seller can process the gift packages in batch. It's more flexible when they decide not to ship with a gift. And, there's a weight limit for sending a small parcel.
Why couldn't they just say that the purchase of a multimeter includes a free gift that will be shipped independently, and then ship the multimeter with the regular tracking and the free gift later using whatever economies of scale you are proposing?
Because that makes your marketing message confusing to the buyer. It seems to me that Asian sellers think it's highly valuable to include a 'free gift'. I've gotten many worthless 'free gifts' (in the same package as the order of the actual product (off AliExpress); so there's no advantage like described in the OP). So I conclude that this whole 'free gift' thing really works with their domestic customers, and many sellers are not sophisticated/specialized enough to realize that for Western buyers, they don't gain anything.
Under that world view, a) there is no reason to include the 'separate shipping' thing; and b) adding it makes your ad copy look complicated, to the point of discouraging a sale. If you say 'free xxx with every purchase!', that looks like a good thing. But if you have to add qualifications to it (and I don't mean legally required fine print that you don't actually want customers to read, I mean something you want the customer to internalize), it becomes a bad thing that confuses your marketing message.
Just my arm-chair speculation - I've wondered about this and similar issues numerous times over the last years though. So many things seem to illogical in that world, yet they must make someone somewhere money somehow.
Could it be that the dim weight of the combined order + free gift bumps up the shipping cost? Because I know that I have ordered items from China that have free shipping unless I have more than 4 or 5 items in the same order, then the shipping goes from free to an unattactive amount. Sellers have told me to instead place multiple orders for smaller quantity and then the shipping on each is free.
Ha, yeah that is weird. Random thought: Maybe to help prevent package theft? It usually takes about a month for shipping, so I imagine a lot of people forget about their order. By sending the throw away package first, the recipient is 'primed' and is more likely to be on the lookout for the real thing, as opposed to letting it sit on their doorstep for a day or two where it can be stolen.
Seems like it's having the opposite effect though--the throwaway is causing people to think they've been scammed and makes them no longer on the lookout for the real package.
It's possible their multichannel logistics is easier to handle with a blanket policy.
Amazon does penalize you for not shipping on time, but it's not quite the same as eBay. While eBay lowers your tank, Amazon closes your listing, and possibly your entire store.
I totally believe it. I don't ship anything from China specifically anything else but epacket, but I do know that elsewhere in southeast Asia, it's either DHL or eons of waiting.
The truth is simple, many of Amazon sellers are double or even triple dropshippers.
They ordered your package from another dropshipper, and sent you a parcel with a correct tracking number to fool Amazon into thinking that the parcel was already shipped.
That's a very interesting explanation! Maybe an extra twist to make it less confusing for the customer would be to include a small card in the first package saying "your package is on its way! Thanks for ordering!" Some people would still be annoyed, but it'd be the truth, and it would reduce most suspicion that you'd been sold a box of rocks.
I wonder why we have the USPS Chinese subsidy? [1] Seems this makes the shipping fraud too easy as it is low cost.
It was a small epacket -- a special subsidized shipping option that the USPS offers Chinese merchants, effectively enabling them to ship a parcel from China to the U.S. for less than it costs to send that same parcel domestically
Due to the unbalanced pricing policies of the United Postal Union and subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service, it costs people in China virtually nothing to ship small packages to the U.S.
I think a better solution would be to lower the outrageous prices charged by the USPS to us.
If you want to send a 1oz 'package' to, for example, France, it will cost $13.50. It used to cost closer to $3.40, and then they doubled it overnight to $7, and now it is freakishly high.
Why is this? Because the USPS has a monopoly and is allowed to rob us!
The Postal Service can’t just raise prices as it sees fit. It needs approval from the Postal Regulatory Commission. Also they’ve had to pre-pay something like 30 years of retiree health benefits. You can send packages to France without using the USPS.
Since the USPS has a legal monopoly on shipping below the price floor that applies to other carriers... that claim would appear to be completely correct?
Sure you can, but my understanding is that all non-USPS postal services must obey a legally mandated price floor, which prevents them from competing with USPS on cost.
If I'm not mistaken you have this backwards. USPS is the one subject to a price floor that's tied in some way to cost, since they don't have the profitability constraints that UPS/Fedex do.
EDIT: Never mind, there are apparently price floors enforced on both USPS and private postal companies.
Because the USPS has a monopoly and is allowed to rob us!
What monopoly? There are a number of private carriers providing international service; the USPS has no special market power. (Indeed, it's at a competitive disadvantage, because it's legally mandated to provide service to all domestic addresses, including remote ones that private carriers can refuse to serve.)
It is illegal for private delivery companies to deliver to mailboxes. Also, FedEx and UPS have universal delivery that EXCEEDS the U.S.P.S. For example, I live on a rural road and the postal service won't deliver to my home, but FedEx and UPS do regularly.
Yes; just get a lockbox to put near your door and clearly label it as for packages. The idea of a mailbox and the laws regarding it tend to be rather specific. For instance, stealing from a mailbox is a federal matter but stealing packages from your doorstep is a local police matter.
The postal service won't deliver mail to your mailbox or just packages to your door? I can see they see a difference but if they deliver mail to your box then I fail to see why they would refuse a package to your door.
Postal rates aren't (in most cases) determined by bilateral treaties between governments. There's a single organisation that handles things for roughly the whole of the UN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
I've had stuff actually show up in a week from China (Actually my 3D printer - FLSun Cube was one of those items). Of course, I've been having stuff show up in about 4-6 weeks as of late.
If you’re an eBay seller, that advantage makes it nearly impossible to compete on a lot of cheaper products. Also, the return shipping is usually astronomical so a lot of buyers just end up stuck with merchandise they might otherwise return.
> A big part of the explanation is a United Nations body called the Universal Postal Union. The UPU helps coordinate rates and standards between nearly every national postal system, and has been a crucial piece of global infrastructure since its founding in 1874 (it was absorbed into the United Nations only in the 20th century). But critics argue that the system now amounts to a subsidy for international shipping from developing countries and net exporters.
Funny how this sort of subsidy is how Ponzi schemes were partially inspired by
onzi received a letter from a company in Spain asking about the advertising catalog. Inside the envelope was an international reply coupon (IRC), something which he had never seen before. He asked about the IRC and found a weakness in the system which would, in theory, allow him to make money.
The purpose of the postal reply coupon was to allow someone in one country to send it to a correspondent in another country, who could use it to pay the postage of a reply. IRCs were priced at the cost of postage in the country of purchase, but could be exchanged for stamps to cover the cost of postage in the country where redeemed; if these values were different, there was a potential profit. Inflation after World War I had greatly decreased the cost of postage in Italy expressed in U.S. dollars, so that an IRC could be bought cheaply in Italy and exchanged for U.S. stamps of higher value, which could then be sold. Ponzi claimed that the net profit on these transactions, after expenses and exchange rates, was in excess of 400%. This was a form of arbitrage, or profiting by buying an asset at a lower price in one market and immediately selling it in a market where the price is higher, which is completely legal.[8]
According to the article, this is not the enabling factor - the placing of an order from a fake account is. This order is what makes the spoofer able to leave the fake review; that someone actually gets something in the mail is more or less an artifact coming from the seller having to show that some transaction took place and it needs to look real.
edit: hmm, seems like they need a tracking number to show so it is not flagged and that is what's needed for this thing.
Because the USPS wanted to set US retail postal rates without negotiating with China Post and 150 others. Other countries' postal systems wanted the same autonomy.
So the postal union made a deal: The USPS decides how much to charge for postage to China, carries the mail to the Chinese border, China Post carries it from there, and the two split the USPS' retail price according to a set formula. Ditto for every other country combination. Simple. Saves a lot of negotiating.
But it means that if, say, the German postal system is able to send mail to the American border much more cheaply than the USPS to the German border, then the USPS will subsidise the Germans. Which is the case: I sent a heavy book from Munich to Seattle this summer for €17. Then the recipient sent it back, which cost a little over $50.
The difference is starker when you compare China and the US, but comparing Germany and the US is fair. Both are high-cost countries. I think the Americans should stop complaining until they have the prices down to German levels (or to an average of rich countries if you will).
This may still be true, if you're talking about some kind of broad categories of countries. But from your example, the US is then clearly a much-higher-cost country than Germany. There's a lot of crazy expensive stuff in the US, that wouldn't fly like that in Northwest Europe. Go grocery shopping. Get a cellular plan. Conversely, get a job. You'll see the differences. Everything is so freakin' inflated in the US, it's not even funny anymore (as if it'd ever be). (I grew up close to the German border.)
Here in the uk the mailers have a fancy method for making up the difference in pricing, they call it 'handling fee'.
So you pay postage from your parcel in country X, and on arrival in the UK, it's held, sometime for customs and/or VAT -- and then the carrier tries to charge you up to £20 for 'handling fee' to deliver it to you.
Basically what they do is try to hold you hostage to pay for the delivery, even tho you have paid postage already AND they are supposed to have an agreement with the oversea mailers about it.
It's really daylight robbery. And they all do it. Royal Mail, DHL, Fedex etc.
Can you contact the sender and tell them to sort it out? They are the courier's customer so really it's their problem to resolve. Just say "I never received my parcel" and let them figure it out.
I get those messages too. There are three options:
1. Pay the courier company to take care of customs.
2. Go to the customs office and do it yourself. I remember discussing with a customs officer what category a Soekris net4501 really was. ;)
3. Return the parcel.
The good news is that Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress and some others deal with it now. Anyone who sells via Ebay can have the customs stuff processed by Ebay for a much more reasonable fee.
OK, so the issue is unpaid customs fees, which you can pay the courier to sort out for you. I thought they were demanding extra postage or something like that.
Say you order an USB-to-centronics adapter from China. Then the DHL/whatever courier brings it to you and says "you have to pay €1.07 VAT on that, and also a €25 handling charge to DHL for acting as a middleman between you and the customs office". That €25 stings.
I find it funny the article implies this only happens across international borders, and would otherwise be policed and stopped if it only happened within the US. I receive unwanted junk mail daily and it isn't even addressed to me, but to 'Current Resident'.
The real solution is to allow residents to whitelist or blacklist mail. Or better yet tie mail to people and organizations, not places, and allow people to route whatever mail wherever they want.
Of course there is, but I don't consider unsolicited advertising inherently immoral, while I would consider fraudulently gaining a business advantage dishonest and immoral.
I don’t know if this’d work at all, but I’ve idly considered the possibility of starting a grassroots “return to sender” campaign for junk mail.
As it is, the postal service is paid to deliver all of that spam—but maybe it would no longer be cost-effective if everyone just said “nope, send it back” whenever possible. As it is, I just recycle all of it, but it still probably represents a sizable environmental impact in terms of materials, printing, delivery, recycling, and landfills, which we could entirely do away with.
When I was in college I would do this with all the credit card offers received, or anything else I found offensive, if it had a return envelope. All the paper they sent would go back in the return envelope, along with a handful of pennies, and maybe a guitar string or two taped across the top flap.
I'm sure most of them cost several dollars in postage to get back.
They could also require that any transaction with USPS must use up at least 5 minutes of the sender's time, and have the cost of a transaction increase with the square of the number of items sent in that transaction. (or some scheme like that).
It's the free shipping subsidy that's the underlying cause. It's the same reason we all receive enormous amounts of email spam (for me it's a couple hundred per day) - the cost of sending email is zero.
I bet the email spam problem could be solved at a stroke if senders were charged $.01 per email.
No. It would be solved if people could run a whitelist that was directly tied to your address book, and any address you sent email TO would automatically be added to this address book/whitelist.
Exactly. Often the shipping weight will be measured as it is shipped (likely because most of these are coming by air). Alibaba and others pass this shipping information on to the customer and would likely notice overly low shipping weights.
Fraudulent sellers will also use a similar method in certain countries where the delivery address is not tracked but weight and delivery status are. They can send a nonsense package to the right country/state, have it appear in China post tracking as delivered, but the fake package was actually went to a random address with a roughly expected weight. If customers try to file claims on sites like aliexpress they'll likely rule in the favor of the seller unless you can somehow get your local post office to provide proof it was never delivered to your specific address.
Interesting. As per Washington Post in 2014 USPS was losing about $1 per every package shipped as ePacket from China. These spam shipments effectively are harming USPS.
When a newspaper prints '{statement}, according to {source}' there's a reason: they don't independently verify those facts. They're printing it in the hope that it's useful, and giving you their source as a cop out or, if you're being charitable, so that you can decide whether you want to believe it or not.
The statement "In 2012, USPS was paid only 94 cents on average for each piece of Chinese ePacket mail, according to a February report from the Postal Service’s inspector general’s office." is probably 100% accurate, in the same sense that "Rahim is the best dad ever, according to his son" is true, could be 100% accurate. You could stand by either statement. And both could be accurate. But it doesn't mean they're not misleading (in that the fact being discussed might not be true).
If you look for it, you'll see similar patterns scattered all over newspapers. One of the most common examples: '{company} reported 4th quarter earnings of {amount}'. There's a reason they don't simply say ''{company} earned {amount} in Q4'.
It is not only happening in the US, my SO in Spain received these a few months ago - unsolicited envelopes from China containing a single hair tie each (and once very cheap-looking sunglasses).
Wait, can't we do the same? I mean, make money exploiting legal loopholes at the cost of Chinese people and government? After all, the borders work two ways.
Wait, what? Are we upset with China then? So that we want to target innocent Chinese people? As the article clearly states: it's illegal in China too. Is disrespecting the personal mailing address of a random, innocent Chinese person less valuable than the personal mailing address of a random, innocent American? Unless you have personal mailing addresses lying around of the specific people who are brushing the system from China now? But then... while the article talks about stuff being sent from China, I didn't get the idea that it necessarily had to be (exclusively) Chinese people who did it?
The epacket mailing is very common on low cost items you can find on ebay. I have seen it on items costing pennies and actually have won such an auction for less than a dollar and received what was listed. Now apparently the ebay buying has been safe for me and those I know who also have bought epacket delivered items, now they don't come fast but they all have arrived.
so which retailers are they skimming for addresses?
93 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadThere are many cases of people getting shipped drugs and then having the police called on them once the package arrives. It could happen to anyone really. It is also fairly common that people ship drugs to anti-drug politicians.
Source?
I've spent time thinking about what kind of fraud they're committing, because it doesn't make sense to me why they would send the garbage package with the tracking number from my order -- which screams fraud -- but then also send me the actual thing I ordered. They're sending two packages to the same address, but it doesn't make sense why, since they're obviously not committing the most straightforward kind of fraud ("We shipped the item, you can see the tracking number", which incidentally, only works on eBay and not Amazon).
I always suspected something was going on with the aliexpress ratings. If you look at the reviews it is a lot of one liners like 'i got the item as described!' with a 5 star rating.
Jeez. Honestly, I mostly ignore reviews on Chinese listing sites unless they're low. It's all about two things:
1. Is the price in line with other listings? From both directions?
2. How many people have ordered it in the past 90 days?
Sometimes that does mean taking a risk with specialty items, or foregoing them. But hey, if it's a critical application I'm not going to source it from sketchy international cheap-o listings.
Under that world view, a) there is no reason to include the 'separate shipping' thing; and b) adding it makes your ad copy look complicated, to the point of discouraging a sale. If you say 'free xxx with every purchase!', that looks like a good thing. But if you have to add qualifications to it (and I don't mean legally required fine print that you don't actually want customers to read, I mean something you want the customer to internalize), it becomes a bad thing that confuses your marketing message.
Just my arm-chair speculation - I've wondered about this and similar issues numerous times over the last years though. So many things seem to illogical in that world, yet they must make someone somewhere money somehow.
Amazon does penalize you for not shipping on time, but it's not quite the same as eBay. While eBay lowers your tank, Amazon closes your listing, and possibly your entire store.
ePacket is actually one of the faster postal service options from China
They ordered your package from another dropshipper, and sent you a parcel with a correct tracking number to fool Amazon into thinking that the parcel was already shipped.
It was a small epacket -- a special subsidized shipping option that the USPS offers Chinese merchants, effectively enabling them to ship a parcel from China to the U.S. for less than it costs to send that same parcel domestically
Due to the unbalanced pricing policies of the United Postal Union and subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service, it costs people in China virtually nothing to ship small packages to the U.S.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-...
If you want to send a 1oz 'package' to, for example, France, it will cost $13.50. It used to cost closer to $3.40, and then they doubled it overnight to $7, and now it is freakishly high.
Why is this? Because the USPS has a monopoly and is allowed to rob us!
EDIT: Never mind, there are apparently price floors enforced on both USPS and private postal companies.
What monopoly? There are a number of private carriers providing international service; the USPS has no special market power. (Indeed, it's at a competitive disadvantage, because it's legally mandated to provide service to all domestic addresses, including remote ones that private carriers can refuse to serve.)
*I'm Canadian.
And Canada also called ePacket. It’s faster-ish.
It’s the Canada Post int’l processing plant and customs that have decided to be slow.
I ordered two of these [1] from China on the 7th. Showed up on the 28th. Only 3 weeks! ($1.32 for two, shipped)
If I wanted to send one to Canada, it would cost $2.29 for postage (because is it a 'flat', so it is cheaper. If it was bulkier, it would cost $9.50).
[1] https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516
http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-chinese...
onzi received a letter from a company in Spain asking about the advertising catalog. Inside the envelope was an international reply coupon (IRC), something which he had never seen before. He asked about the IRC and found a weakness in the system which would, in theory, allow him to make money.
The purpose of the postal reply coupon was to allow someone in one country to send it to a correspondent in another country, who could use it to pay the postage of a reply. IRCs were priced at the cost of postage in the country of purchase, but could be exchanged for stamps to cover the cost of postage in the country where redeemed; if these values were different, there was a potential profit. Inflation after World War I had greatly decreased the cost of postage in Italy expressed in U.S. dollars, so that an IRC could be bought cheaply in Italy and exchanged for U.S. stamps of higher value, which could then be sold. Ponzi claimed that the net profit on these transactions, after expenses and exchange rates, was in excess of 400%. This was a form of arbitrage, or profiting by buying an asset at a lower price in one market and immediately selling it in a market where the price is higher, which is completely legal.[8]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi
edit: hmm, seems like they need a tracking number to show so it is not flagged and that is what's needed for this thing.
So the postal union made a deal: The USPS decides how much to charge for postage to China, carries the mail to the Chinese border, China Post carries it from there, and the two split the USPS' retail price according to a set formula. Ditto for every other country combination. Simple. Saves a lot of negotiating.
But it means that if, say, the German postal system is able to send mail to the American border much more cheaply than the USPS to the German border, then the USPS will subsidise the Germans. Which is the case: I sent a heavy book from Munich to Seattle this summer for €17. Then the recipient sent it back, which cost a little over $50.
The difference is starker when you compare China and the US, but comparing Germany and the US is fair. Both are high-cost countries. I think the Americans should stop complaining until they have the prices down to German levels (or to an average of rich countries if you will).
This may still be true, if you're talking about some kind of broad categories of countries. But from your example, the US is then clearly a much-higher-cost country than Germany. There's a lot of crazy expensive stuff in the US, that wouldn't fly like that in Northwest Europe. Go grocery shopping. Get a cellular plan. Conversely, get a job. You'll see the differences. Everything is so freakin' inflated in the US, it's not even funny anymore (as if it'd ever be). (I grew up close to the German border.)
So you pay postage from your parcel in country X, and on arrival in the UK, it's held, sometime for customs and/or VAT -- and then the carrier tries to charge you up to £20 for 'handling fee' to deliver it to you.
Basically what they do is try to hold you hostage to pay for the delivery, even tho you have paid postage already AND they are supposed to have an agreement with the oversea mailers about it.
It's really daylight robbery. And they all do it. Royal Mail, DHL, Fedex etc.
1. Pay the courier company to take care of customs.
2. Go to the customs office and do it yourself. I remember discussing with a customs officer what category a Soekris net4501 really was. ;)
3. Return the parcel.
The good news is that Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress and some others deal with it now. Anyone who sells via Ebay can have the customs stuff processed by Ebay for a much more reasonable fee.
The real solution is to allow residents to whitelist or blacklist mail. Or better yet tie mail to people and organizations, not places, and allow people to route whatever mail wherever they want.
As it is, the postal service is paid to deliver all of that spam—but maybe it would no longer be cost-effective if everyone just said “nope, send it back” whenever possible. As it is, I just recycle all of it, but it still probably represents a sizable environmental impact in terms of materials, printing, delivery, recycling, and landfills, which we could entirely do away with.
I'm sure most of them cost several dollars in postage to get back.
I bet the email spam problem could be solved at a stroke if senders were charged $.01 per email.
I wish mail could operate on a similar method
Fraudulent sellers will also use a similar method in certain countries where the delivery address is not tracked but weight and delivery status are. They can send a nonsense package to the right country/state, have it appear in China post tracking as delivered, but the fake package was actually went to a random address with a roughly expected weight. If customers try to file claims on sites like aliexpress they'll likely rule in the favor of the seller unless you can somehow get your local post office to provide proof it was never delivered to your specific address.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...
The statement "In 2012, USPS was paid only 94 cents on average for each piece of Chinese ePacket mail, according to a February report from the Postal Service’s inspector general’s office." is probably 100% accurate, in the same sense that "Rahim is the best dad ever, according to his son" is true, could be 100% accurate. You could stand by either statement. And both could be accurate. But it doesn't mean they're not misleading (in that the fact being discussed might not be true).
If you look for it, you'll see similar patterns scattered all over newspapers. One of the most common examples: '{company} reported 4th quarter earnings of {amount}'. There's a reason they don't simply say ''{company} earned {amount} in Q4'.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439532/us-postal-servi...
so which retailers are they skimming for addresses?