Shantelle tells Consumerist that she ordered one garbage can from Walmart online. No one is entirely sure how, but she ended up with five cans instead. She could give them away or start a drum circle, but now she’s stuck with a dilemma: how does she return something to a store when she never bought it in the first place? Will Walmart ever catch up with her and charge her for the four additional cans…even though there’s no documentation that she ever received them?

While I hate shopping at Wal-mart IRL, I quite enjoy their online shopping. I can often find good deals and free shipping, their customer ratings are quite helpful, and if I have a problem with an item I can take it back to a store with no questions.

I am having an odd dilemma with my most recent order. I ordered four items, one of which was a tall plastic garbage can.

The box showed up, I opened it, and found FOUR tall plastic garbage cans. The other items were not there, although they were listed on the enclosed packing slip (along with a correct note of ONE garbage can).

I was all prepared to take the package to the store and deal with the mistake, when another box showed up.

I figured it was my missing items. It was. Along with ANOTHER tall plastic garbage can.

I’m not outraged, I’m not whining. I’m just worried that Wal-mart is going to figure out their mistake and bill me for these 4 cans. I’m an honest person, I don’t want to keep something that isn’t mine (plus who needs 5 garbage cans?) but I am also worried that if I return them to the store it won’t be noted in my account and they will then later bill me. How can they do a return for something I never bought?

Can anyone tell me how to get a hold of someone about this? I’ve scoured the orders area of the website and can’t seem to find any contact information.

Help! I’m drowning in garbage cans.

At the rate the local municipal trash collectors are destroying my garbage cans, I could use all four of Shantelle’s extras. But that doesn’t help.

I would return the four extra cans to a brick-and-mortar Walmart store and demand some kind of documentation of their return. Are there any shoppers out there with experience in this area, or knowledgeable Walmart employees (no, that’s not an oxymoron) who can help?

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