Why did somebody send me a weird, strangely expensive Japanese earphone?

September 23, 2020 3:05 PM

I accidentally opened a package mailed to my address but in the name of somebody who's never lived here. It's actually the second package to arrive addressed to this person - the first, I left out and it disappeared after a few days. The package contained this inscrutable Japanese "earspeaker system," which I still don't quite understand but which seems to go for $500+ across various online platforms. The weirdness of the product makes this feel like a scam - is this just a (second) misdelivered package or is something else going on here?
posted by exutima to Grab Bag (10 answers total)

Brushing, maybe?
posted by geegollygosh at 3:09 PM on September 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

Stax is a known manufacturer of electrostatic headphones, they've been around a long time- at least since the '80s if not earlier. (Electrostatic headphones use a plastic membrane which is attracted and repelled by high voltage electric charges, as opposed to the normal electrodynamic speakers/headphones which use a cone connected to a voice coil which acts like an electromagnet pushing and pulling against a permanent magnet. ) Anyway, some audiophiles get excited over electrostatic headphones. Whether today's Stax is the same highish end company that made headphones in the '80s or whether someone bought the name might take some research. I can't answer the "why" of how they were sent to you, but hopefully a little background on what they are and the company helps?
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:04 PM on September 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I had something like this happen to me recently: boxes from a famous electronics company sent to my address, but with the name of a person I'd never heard of.

Luckily, one of the packages had a contact number on it, so I called the number, and the person on the label answered. They explained that they'd accidentally shipped the items to an old address, and had already been refunded by the company.

Your situation might be similar--it might be as simple as an error in the ordering process. I can't think of a way this could be a scam, but I'm not that imaginative.
posted by Black Cordelia at 6:45 PM on September 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

One possibility -- someone is using stolen credit cards and then trying to intercept/ get the package once it arrives by monitoring trackers/ delivery notifications.
posted by zeikka at 6:27 AM on September 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yes. Make sure your credit card numbers haven't been stolen.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:01 AM on September 24, 2020

If it's amazon, report it. They make some effort to stop fraud. In any case, free gear for you.
posted by theora55 at 7:11 AM on September 24, 2020

Here’s a nice overview of electrostatic headphones in case anyone’s interested
posted by stinkfoot at 7:45 AM on September 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

Whether today's Stax is the same highish end company that made headphones in the '80s or whether someone bought the name might take some research.

Luckily, I am a little bit obsessed with headphones (or, as Stax prefers to style it, earspeakers)--it's the same company, and they still make headphones and headphone amps that start at several hundred dollars and top out at several thousand.
posted by box at 11:41 AM on September 24, 2020

Whoa, those are Stax headphones. Very highly sought after in the audiophile community.
posted by cazoo at 11:55 AM on September 24, 2020

It sounds like a misdelivery to me. Stax is a legit Japanese company making high-end audio products, and using them for brushing up a seller's ratings would get expensive really quickly. (fwiw I've tried those earphones before, they sound great but their wearability and comfort is... idiosyncratic, let's say.) I would recommend contacting the seller about this; if it was shipped by Amazon, they have a return process for recipients of misdelivered items.
posted by ardgedee at 4:47 PM on September 24, 2020