A doting single mother in Kentucky got the shock of her life when her son ordered 70,000 Dum-Dums lollipops on Amazon, saddling her with 22 boxes and a $4,200 bill.
Holly LaFavers had just gotten paid when on Sunday she noticed her bank account was in the red and “just about fainted,” she told The Associated Press.
She then discovered that her 8-year-old son, Liam, had ordered them while playing on her phone, as she sometimes lets him do. Liam normally just window-shops and had never pressed the “order” button before, she said. But this time it was different.
“He told me that he wanted to have a carnival, and he was ordering the Dum-Dums as prizes for his carnival,” LaFavers said. “He was being kind to his friends.”
Though LaFavers immediately tried to cancel the order, she wasn’t quick enough to stop 22 boxes from landing on her doorstep. Amazon initially told her to reject the delivery and said she’d be refunded, but that seemed questionable when the retailer wouldn’t take back the already-delivered boxes.
Another eight boxes made it to the post office, and LaFavers was able to head off that shipment and return them.
The initial delivery, however, was there to stay. Friends, family, community members and even several businesses — from local banks to doctor’s offices — offered to buy the boxes, LaFavers told “Good Morning America.”
A refund took another couple of days of haggling, LaFavers wrote in a Facebook post, but that too turned out alright, since Amazon finally forked over the money “after a long day of working with the bank and talking to a few news stations,” she wrote.
Liam, whom LaFavers adopted when he was 2, had been diagnosed at age 4 with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, she told “GMA.” She said she shared their story partly to draw attention to the condition, which stems from alcohol exposure in the womb and can impair a child’s impulse control, emotional regulation and understanding of cause and effect.
With News Wire Services
