Exclusive | NYC shop peddles mystery packages of Amazon, Walmart returns like hotcakes but theres a twist

A Bronx store has gone viral for peddling $4-a-pop “mystery” packages from retailers such as Amazon and Walmart that were returned and are now up for resale — but the set-up isn’t without controversy.The packaged deals have been flying out of massive bins at Dollar Universe in Allerton faster than employees can restock the containers since an April TikTok video posted by a local influencer racked up nearly half a million views, store manager Luis Almonte told The Post.“People are buying these like crazy,” he said last week.“Today I sold 150 packages.

We have people coming all the way from Brooklyn.”But at least some of the wrapped parcels’ original owners were disgusted to learn from The Post that the packages — which hail everywhere from Texas to Florida to Pennsylvania — still have their names and addresses on them.“It’s an invasion of privacy,” said Melanie Bagley of Levittown, Pa.— who had a FedEx parcel with her name and address on that ended up for sale in The Bronx.“It’s personal information.

That’s scary, because you don’t know what somebody can do [with it],” Bagley said.“It should be against the law,” she said of the sale of the packages with the information still on them.She said she never even ordered the sports bras that were in the package.From now on, “I will definitely be monitoring things a little bit more closely,” she said.Tina Tian, a business owner in Huntington Station on Long Island, said she returned a package of LED lights that ended up in the bin.When told how they were now being sold in The Bronx, she said, “Whoa.“I don’t know how they got there.”The mystery packages – and most of Dollar Universe’s other inventory — come from massive liquidation centers in Brooklyn and New Jersey that buy returns in bulk from retailers including Amazon and Walmart, Almonte said.The returns are usually opened, inspected for damage and then sold to businesses such as Dollar Universe.But Almonte...