Lost Item

[faitaccompli]

I am in a bit of a quandary. Been having a torrid time recently, sold a lot of stuff on ebay and had £300 to spend on myself (having spent all my money recently on ex p and DS).

I bought myself an Apple Watch.

It was due to be delivered in a few weeks time so I used my office address. I work from the office 4 days a week.

Of course, Thursday last week, I got an email to say it was being delivered early (hooray) - the following day (boo) - the day when no one works in the office. I could not change the delivery address as it had already been despatched.

As luck would have it, the admin lady was in the office supervising the removal of office furniture. We are moving offices, selling lots of stuff and the daughter of her friend was sending over some removal men to store some of the furniture for her new company.

I could not call the office as the phones were diverted and mobiles do not work, so I could not warn the admin lady that this package was coming and would need to be signed for.

On Saturday, I looked at the tracking notice and it said the Admin Lady had signed for it. So I drove the 20 minute drive to the office, but the package was nowhere to be seen. I called the admin lady, and she said that she signed for it but could not remember where she had put it. I had another search, a colleague then turned up and they had a search for it but still could not find it. I looked for an hour!

Today the admin lady came into the office and also could not find it. I asked her to find out from the friend's daughter who had taken the furniture whether she had it. To be honest, it must have been picked up by the removal men as it is a remote office, locked and no one else had been there, not even the cleaner. It is in private grounds, so people do not "wander" by.

Admin lady told me that the container was not going to be opened until June! I was pretty cross and said that this was not acceptable - someone had taken a £300 watch and I was not waiting until June to get it back! Plus, we don't know whether it will be in the container. If it is not in the container, then the removal men have stolen it. No other way of putting it. The admin lady is 200% reliable.

So she has emailed the friend's daughter and we are now waiting to find out.

I am pissed off because it was a treat for me after a pretty shitty four weeks and I had been looking forward to playing with it over the weekend. And also because if it HAS gone missing, who the hell is responsible for replacing it. Not the Admin Lady (although she has said she feels responsible and will replace it, I absolutely would not allow that to happen), the lady who bought the furniture? The removal men? Me?

If it is found, then of course there is no problem. But right now, I am short £300, have no watch and no one seems to give a damn about getting it back to me apart from me!

AIBU to expect the friend's daughter to be responsible for replacing it, bearing in mind that it can ONLY have been her removals people who took it from the office?

the admin lady signed for your parcel and then lost it, the fact that she can't even tell you where she put it means she is responsible, if my neighbour signs for a parcel and then loses it in their house then id hold them responsible.

Another quick update - I called 101 and reported the issue on TUesday. Had a call today and they will be following up with the removal company, checking names against the PNC and taking statements. They said that often, if they did this, the item reappeared ... I was extremely pleased that they are going to do this as I had no great expectation that they would have time to do anything about it.

I can only keep my fingers crossed that this will unearth the watch.

Good. I hope it works!

Fingers crossed for you op.

However I agree with the majority here - admin lady is to blame. She took the responsibility of signing for the item and then misplaced it AND she was meant to be supervising the removal men. You seem to be determined to blame the daughter, for reasons unknown. Even saying she was on holiday 'having fun' seems quite spiteful - why shouldn't she have fun? Also blaming her for buying 'cheap furniture' etc. Please don't be bitter towards her for her part in this - she cannot be held responsible for the actions of the admin lady/removal company!

My irritation towards the daughter was that she took 8 DAYS to reply to my email asking for information on the removal men - saying she was on holiday as an excuse not to have responded. She knew that the item had gone missing, but had not bothered to do anything about it. And when she did reply, all she did was say that they couldn't look properly right now.

She then totally ignored an email I sent asking for the phone number of the removal company. Completely ignored it!

So she will have to speak to the police and perhaps will be more co-operative with them than she was with me ...

If she chose a small uninsured company with no security checks on their employees and sent them into our office, then hey - she is responsible in some way for their actions, surely.

Admin lady is definitely to blame, as she would be if it had been something work related that was stolen.

The daughter may be more cooperative, it's a shame she wasn't in the first place before she went away but I'm not sure if she has an actual responsibility at all. She employed the removal men one of whom may well have stolen it but they could more easily point the finger at admin lady and the Police will more likely look at her since she took delivery and responsibility. So it will be he said she said and they'll believe that it's more likely the person who signed for the package then those who will deny seeing it...

That's awful for you though OP, unless it does freak the thief out enough to return then I think you should ask admin lady for at least some towards it. Maybe it might prompt them to open the container, it may well be in there.

Did you pay for it by credit card - if you did most will reimburse a lost item if it is within a certain time of buying it.

A friend of mine sent me a birthday present to the wrong house - when I called round they denied all knowledge although it had been signed for so not the couriers fault. She rang the shop who said it wasn't their fault but when she rang the credit card company they paid for another without question and it was actually her fault as she put the wrong house number on.

Good luck

I don't know why you are so furious with the person who bought the furniture for going on holiday

Admin lady signed for watch, admin lady took responsibility for delivering package to owner, admin lady lost package... Admin lady at fault and should replace.

I don't see how your company, the removal company or the daughter have any responsibility at all here.

The admin lady is probably partially responsible, however how was she to know she was signing for an expensive personal item? I expect if she had known she was taking responsibility/liability for this type of thing she would have refused to do so or at least kept an eye on it more closely.

I think you have to take some of the blame for having such an item delivered to a work address where you could not guarantee to be there or that the item would be safe if you were not there.

It is a horrible situation but I find it hard to have much sympathy for you OP. YABVU to complain about the daughter, she has no duty to reply to your emails in flash, this issue simply isn't her problem.

I suspect if you want any compensation it is going to have to come from the admin lady. Personally if I were the admin lady I would be quite unhappy to say the least!

I didn't expect an answer "in a flash" - but I did expect that she would be bothered to reply in a reasonably speed fashion.

I know that I would have been onto it quickly if there was any possibility that someone working for me had purposely (or inadvertently) taken something that was not in the pile to be collected.

WOuldn't you?

The admin lady HAS offered to pay - but there is no way I could take her up on this - she is elderly and does not have money to throw away.

It was 100% the removal company who were there on the request of the daughter.

Yes - it is my bad luck, but, Eyebag63, I am surprised that you find it "hard to have sympathy for me". I cannot quite see where in this I have done anything wrong, other than pay for a watch that has now disappeared. I am not asking anyone else to pay for it; all I asked was that the daughter and her removal company got off their backsides and looked properly for the item in a timely fashion.

It's a shame the watch disappeared. I have sympathy over the loss of the watch, but am puzzled why you are still bitterly blaming others. Why are you still blaming the daughter and her removal company? She was on holiday so of course replying to your email or searching for watch was not high on her list of priorities, she may not have even opened her emails until she returned, or had more important things to do. TBH I doubt she cared much about the missing watch, it had nothing to do with her and it was NOT her responsibility to search for it, or organise her removal company to search for it. Searching for your lost item was a favour on her part. The watch should never have been left in a place where they had access to it or could load it into van by mistake. And I don't see how the admin lady is to blame, you didn't warn her to expect an expensive personal item in post. Ultimately YOU made the decision to have this item delivered to your work address, which was a mistake.
I understand it must be very upsetting, but I think you need to accept responsibility for your decision, chalk it up to experience, and move on.

I'm surprised anyone thinks the admin lady or her daughter are responsible. The admin lady signed for the parcel as a favour - I'm sure if she was told she would be responsible for any loss if the parcel went missing then she wouldn't have accepted it. I'm glad the OP isn't going to charge her for it.

It's obviously awful that the OP has lost her watch but it's no one else's 'fault' - (unless it was stolen by the removal men )

Xpost.

For the last time! The office is SHUT on a Friday and the rest of hte time I am the first one there, the last one to leave. THe admin lady went to the office PURELY to do the daughter a favour as we were selling her a lot of high quality furniture very cheaply as we are moving office.

This should NOT have been done on the Friday and I was not aware of it until it was too late for me to do anything about warning her that there was a delivery. The phones were forwarded (as usual on a Friday) and there is no mobile signal.

The daughter took 8 days to reply. She was not on holiday the whole time. She had a weekend, then she had a couple of days when she was at work.

It would have been polite to acknowledge the email. Not ignore it.

ANd I am STILL waiting for the contact details of the removal company.

This is now 16 days after the watch went missing.

How, on any planet, is this considered reasonable!

The watch is not lost. The watch was removed from the office by the removal men. They need to return it. Otherwise, the police will consider it stolen.

Geez, so she's personally responsible for your watch by signing for it? Or the daughter? What if she hasn't got £300?

But you have no proof that the removals men took it. Unless you have firm proof then you can't blame them.

I bet it turns up in a couple of weeks when the container is opened in June.

You might just have to wait it out op. Like a grown up.

Honestly what is the liklihood removal men stole it? Surely it's more likely the box got caught up with all the other stuff and moved into the container?

Wait for it? Like a grown up? How rude!

I had until 22nd May to return the watch if it was faulty or if I did not like it. That was two days ago.

OK. They took desks, tables, white boards. It was not a general office move - just some office furniture.

It was not put with the furniture - it was put with the admin lady's handbag at the other end of the office.

If it is not in the office (which it is NOT), and if the removal men have checked twice and it is not in the container (which they have, apparently), then one of the removal men must have accidentally taken it home with them.

If they would give me the address of the container (which I have asked for twice) I would happily go there to check. There were something like 10 desks, a white board, a board room table, 10 chairs, a couple of cupboards. So not difficult to see a white jiffy bag containing an Apple watch ... It was not an office move with lots of boxes or paperwork etc. It is JUST furniture.

But its not your stuff to search through.

I think you need to calm down.

If the watch is faulty to you have up to 6 months to return it where the burden of proof is on the seller to prove it is not a manufacturing fault under the Sale Of Goods Act.

I know it's annoying and I know it's expensive but it is just a watch. It's not a kidney for transplant or something critical.

TBH, if it was that big a deal, you should have gone and waited for it yourself. Of course no one is going to be losing sleep as much as you are.

You really shouldn't have had an expensive personal item delivered to work. I'm sure many places of employment would have a policy advising against this and that no responsibility can be taken if said item goes missing.
You can have items delivered to many shops/post offices nowadays to collect or are you telling us there are also no shops where you live?
This has now caused a problem to many different people and I'm sorry but I don't think it's fair