To say that this is why people don't answer doors

[RachelGreep87]

There a number of scams such as this one where a "damsel in distress" will get into your house and do god knows what.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9244545/Moment-woman-caught-doorbell-cam-trying-way-house-shouting-need-help.html

All of you devil-may-care door openers are potentially welcoming this into your home.

There is no reason to answer the door to unannounced callers.

YABU - I am willing to gamble my life and answer the door at anytime
YANBU - Not answering the door if I'm not expecting anyone

@Sparklingbrook

How about this one?

Perfect!

I don't understand people who MUST open the door or answer the phone every time the bell or phone rings. Are they happy to drop everything they are doing every single time?

Every single time?

Apart from elderly MIL who phones at the same time every day, our house phone has rung precisely three times in the last week. Two of those calls were pre-arranged and we were expecting, one was someone pretending to be from BT about our broadband.

The door has gone once. That was the postman with a parcel that needed to be signed for.

I can honestly say that being unexpectedly disturbed on just two occasions over an entire week has caused me no issues whatsoever.

During the first lockdown my mother answered the door to a man who was on drugs and claimed he was being chased. He pushed her out of the way and basically ran into her house. Thankfully a few neighbours saw it happen, as he'd tried other doors first, and two male neighbours came and removed him from her house and kept him in the garden until the police arrived.

This was about eight o'clock at night and still light out. Lots of people told my mother off for opening her door but she did what she'd always done. It was instinctive for her.

Thank god for her neighbours who put themselves at risk during a pandemic as who knows what his intentions were.

I look through the spy hole.

If I don't recognise the person I can ask.

I often don't refuse to open my door and don't think I'm gambling with my life!

Joys of living in a flat with intercom (when it works).

You don't tend to get bothered by any of this.

Jehovah's Witness you can go on a list if you ask them - means they won't call again.

My mum never opens the door. She is security conscious to the point of insanity. She has constructed an incredibly elaborate story about her two sons. One is a copper, the other is in the Marines. These fictional men have names, she has assigned them birthdays and wives and kids and she constantly drops these details into conversations with neighbours. She is convinced that if she is known to have 2 hard men sons it will keep any fraudsters at bay. She also still has all utility bills addressed to my dad who died 30 years ago.

I can post this without fear of her seeing it because she doesn't trust the internet either.

Agree. I watched the video. That woman might have been on the phone to her mum or sister who had told her to run to the nearest house and was waiting to find out if she was safe.

I've been answering the door without any concern for my whole life, I'm not going to start on the off chance I'm too dense to be suspicious when an entirely unlikely charade comes to my doorstep.

YANBU.

If not expecting anyone I don't open my front door. I don't want to and it's as simple as that.

It's not really through fear of a mad person, though there have been doorstep attacks not so far away. I'm just completely uninterested in taking time out to open door for doorstep sellers, surveys etc and have to say no thanks, or try to get away from chats I don't want to have.

Expected visitors, postman/deliveries is fine.

My Mum is an 'open door at all costs' person. Years ago she opened door to bailiffs who had the wrong details and address, which she told them, but they just barged in. Cue panicked phone call to me & my brothers. We dashed round there and situation nearly got out of hand as Mum was frightened and we weren't best pleased to say the least.

If I heard panicked screaming outside I would call the police immediately though.

What a drama llama.

I Open the door, I'm Not gambling my life.🙄🙄 I'm glad my life has been more exciting than feeling like opening my door is a five with death.

@StillCoughingandLaughing

I was out and DH was home. Sudden banging on the door. It was the woman over the road. She is nice enough but has a drink problem. She’d come over because she’d set the kitchen on fire and didn’t know what to do. DH call the fire service and then went over to check. It was a very small fire and everyone was ok. What would have happened if he hadn’t opened the door?

She would have rung a different doorbell (just as she’d have had to do if your husband had been out too)? Or shouted ‘Help, my kitchen’s on fire’? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think if it was my door, I might just be a bit more flexible if I heard that. Or do people in a panic because their house is on fire just knock once and shrug when there’s no answer, perhaps grabbing a bag of marshmallows to toast?

During which time the fire would have got worse. Yeah fuck it, I won’t bother answering the door again to a neighbour in trouble in case it’s a ne’er-do-well. Equally I won’t get in a car again because someone I know died in a car crash.

I open the door

Ugh, I hate unexpected knocks on the door. My heart sinks when I hear them. I have a peep hole and use that. If it’s someone I don’t know, then the door doesn’t open.
And if it is someone I know, I wish people would bloody ring or text before turning up!

Hmm, mixed responses. Yes, "gambling with your life" is hyperbolic.
Although perhaps not considering how transmissible the Kent variant is. A quick chitchat with a door caller could be enough.

My point is that there are valid reasons not to open the door and it a valid stance to have. I see the non-dooropeners described as MN myths similar to the Tinkly Laughers and this seems a bit silly. We exist.

I do not know anyone in RL that is weird about answering their front door. If they exist I do not know any, and I am not too terrified to answer the door myself.

My Mum is an 'open door at all costs' person. Years ago she opened door to bailiffs who had the wrong details and address, which she told them, but they just barged in. Cue panicked phone call to me & my brothers. We dashed round there and situation nearly got out of hand as Mum was frightened and we weren't best pleased to say the least.

Oh my god I hope they fucking apologised! Profusely.
How did they finally realise they had messed up?

If it's 5am, I lean out the window to ask WTF don't I, I'm not going straight to the door because I'm not dressed.

I know someone had an over-excited knocker stranger (very rural 0.25 miles from anyone else) experience. Police took ages to come out. The homeowners coped.

Lucky here in that our house isn't on a street, so we never get cold callers here. We did once get someone who said he'd come out of prison and was trying to better himself so we bought some outrageously priced dusters and told him about someone locally who was looking for labourers, but we never saw him again. I'm not sure what I'd do if someone knocked on the door at night and I wasn't expecting them. A Ring doorbell is probably the thing.

My Grandmother used to have a little chain on her door so you could answer it without actually opening the door fully.

Surely whether you are a must-open-door-at-all-times person or not depends on your environment? We live in remote rural area, we NEVER get cold callers, even JWs can't be bothered to drag their arses out to us. When someone knocks on our door, it's normally for a very good reason, such as an injured or escaped animal or a hurt person, so we always answer. When I lived in a city centre, full of drunks at night, I wasn't so keen and I ignored the door late at night. Not because I was scared but because I couldn't be arsed to deal with drunken bullshit. During the day it was because we had a freedom hall around the corner from us and every now and then they would have a new recruit who hadn't got the message yet.

@SilverBirchWithout

YABU.How do people get the meters read?

Surely it depends on where you live, though.

Mine is outside.

Literally every single house I have lived in, the meters were outside or in the porch so did not require access the house.

I don't answer my door because it's usually some idiot trying to sell me something and I don't want to waste my time speaking to them.

I grew up with the idea it was bad manners to not ring ahead and announce your expected arrival. I'm surprised with just how high class some people think they are on MN that they would entertain the idea of accepting visitors unannounced or God forbid leaving the door unlocked so any waif or stray could wander in.

I definitely feel more at risk traveling in a car than I do answering the door. It’s usually a delivery or a neighbour coming to tell me something. Very occasionally get salesmen but they’ve never been problematic.

In my time in London I've lived in one flat where someone tried to pry the bars off my window to get in while I was in the room, one road where two people were stabbed outside my front door, one road where the neighbours attacked each other in the front gardens with pieces of metal piping. My friend saw someone get shot in the head outside her window, and another had words written in blood on his door. So sorry village people, but no I don't leave the bloody door unlocked and welcome all and sundry traipsing in whenever they like, nor does this make me odd or paranoid. If I'm not expecting you, there is absolutely no good reason why you are at my door and so I do not open it.

I have a look out the side window by the door. It's on a curve that I can see them but they can't see me.
Even when I open the door though, I don't open it wide, I stand in the gap in the door. It's impossible to open our door fully anyway, as our sofa is next to it
We had a woman once who was looking (at a different house) down our side alley, trying to look through the window and on the drive, she had knocked but we had a huge through lounge back then, so she didn't immediately get a response. When I saw what she was up to o left it a bit then answered and shouted "CAN I HELP YOU" - she shit herself.
She made up that she was "looking for her mate Lisa" (we had lived in that house for about 6 years so load of balls). Then she ran.
We also had similar with two big guys one morning, have to say I did pants it and DP was away visiting a mate so I was home alone with two infant school age kids.
One knocked and the other walked up the side alleyway.
I opened the door with the chain on and my phone ready to call police. It was the police! Plain clothes. They thought our house and the HMO next door were still one big property, as it had been before we moved in.
They were very apologetic for scaring me, but we're looking for a guy who had lived next door. He had left about 3 months before, very loudly as he and the girl he shared the house with and another girl all had an almighty argument in the street and then he was unceremoniously slung out.

OK you’re being ridiculous. I looked at that video, sadly the most likely scenario is probably that she was escaping domestic violence or something similar. I wouldn’t answer a door in the middle of the night because I would be in bed, although if I had an intercom I would ask who it was. Or if they persisted I would speak through the door.

In the daytime? It’s probably a neighbour saying my key is in the door or asking if the purse on the street is mine or saying that they saw someone steal my bin.

Get a proper chain on the door and think about exploring why the outside world is so terrifying.