New tenants are refusing to hand over my daughter’s parcels

[PerseverancePays]

My daughter ordered £200 worth of clothes for herself and her baby from Next and forgot to put her new address on the order form. The courier has sent a photo of the door opened to her old flat with a man’s leg showing accepting the parcels. She asked her upstairs neighbour to pop down and get the parcels and hang on to them until I can get round there, but the new tenants have point blank said they’ve not had any parcels delivered !
I’m going round there tomorrow morning to show them the picture of them receiving them and seeing what they have to say about that.
If they still refuse, which is daylight robbery, would the police take any notice at all?
I’m also a bit nervous as I’m a short and small woman and easily intimidated. WWYD?

@spinningspaniels

I have lots of Next parcels and there are rarely return labels in them. Most of the time you need to arrange a return online through your account.

You've been well and truly had, I think.

I order from Next all the time and there are always return labels in mine!

Return labels are for Hermes, on the sticky label you get which lists your items.

So this is the last update and it’s a good one. Next have confirmed that the parcels have been returned and will be sending out a fresh order to my daughter. Yay!
We do have a faint suspicion that they may have opened the parcels and then panicked when there was so much attention in getting them back. So they sent them back to Next to cover themselves. They’ve been in the flat for exactly five days, so not inundated with my daughter’s mail. They just made it all much more complicated than it needed to be by not engaging with the neighbour or me, but they came good in the end, that goodness as my daughter is not rolling in cash and this was a significant purchase for her.
Thank you all for all the input, it has been highly enjoyable, (I don’t get out much).
Over and out.

Great update, glad they returned the parcel exactly as they said they had.

great update

I'm glad this is resolved and your daughter hasn't lost her things. It might not be that they intended to steal it, there are so many scams out there and they get more and more elaborate, maybe they were just suspicious and trying to protect themselves?

Wow that's great! Teaches me to be so cynical

Hire a policewoman costume and go knocking.

Top result! They came good. Good on 'em.

They did the best thing as they didn't know whether it was a scam as they didn't know who the person was that the parcel was for or the person who knocked to collect it. I take in parcels for neighbours but I do recognise them all even if I don't know them. Good that it is all resolved.

Phew 😁

@PerseverancePays I am very pleased! What a relief :)

Well that definitively exposes their first response as an outright lie then.

Hopefully all the people who were accusing them of theft will think twice before doing so again.

To answer previous points - it is not illegal to open other people's mail. It's only illegal if you do so "to the detriment" of the addressee. Opening mail to find who sent it so you can return it to them, for example, is fine. Opening a parcel delivered to your home because you didn't notice it wasn't in your name is also fine provided you then take steps to ensure it goes to the right person.

What's happened here is the the daughter fucked up, the people who received the parcel wisely didn't hand it over to anyone knocking on the door asking for it, and they returned it in less than a week which is a perfectly reasonable timeframe. They don't have to inconvenience themselves for someone else's fuck up.

This happened to me with Next, two years ago after we moved home - totally forgot to change the address and ordered some stuff for the new house. As soon as we got the delivery confirmation, we went round to collect the parcel and the new owners denied having received it. We contacted Next who said as far as they were concerned the parcel had been delivered. However, they advised us to either go to the Action Fraud website, report it and get a reference number, or report it as theft to the police and get a crime number, then they would cooperate with any investigation.

We got an Action Fraud reference number and decided to try again, so we went back with the photo evidence from the courier, which clearly showed them taking the parcel. When we told them it had been reported as theft to Action Fraud and that we were about to report it to the police, they very sheepishly admitted they had taken in the parcel, and handed it over - opened and rummaged through.

You or your daughter might want to try the same thing - the idea that it’s been reported as theft and that you have the photo evidence to prove it, might just make them come clean. Good luck.

Just seen the update, glad it’s been resolved. Top result.

So glad they did return it. I agree, I am still suspicious of if this was their intention from the beginning, although we don't know if they'd opened it

@purplebunny. I can understand your suspicion because they may have just done it to cover themselves if they thought there may be repercussions. Having confronted the people concerned in my own situation, the fact that we had evidence to prove they had taken in the parcel and were prepared to take it further, was enough to make them come clean. However, in the days of scams and rip offs, anyone finding themselves in receipt of a parcel intended for someone else would be well advised to return it to the sender instead of just taking it for granted that the person in front of them, claiming the parcel, is the rightful owner. The intended recipient can then be assured that once their returned items are confirmed, they can reorder to the right address.

@ChainJane

Hopefully all the people who were accusing them of theft will think twice before doing so again.

To answer previous points - it is not illegal to open other people's mail. It's only illegal if you do so "to the detriment" of the addressee. Opening mail to find who sent it so you can return it to them, for example, is fine. Opening a parcel delivered to your home because you didn't notice it wasn't in your name is also fine provided you then take steps to ensure it goes to the right person.

What's happened here is the the daughter fucked up, the people who received the parcel wisely didn't hand it over to anyone knocking on the door asking for it, and they returned it in less than a week which is a perfectly reasonable timeframe. They don't have to inconvenience themselves for someone else's fuck up.

I feel sorry for them. Moved in and within a couple of days having people who aren't named on those parcels knocking for them and now people will think they are criminals.

When I accidently signed for someone elses parcels and the police were involved, if it was a scam it would have been me that would have been done if I handed them over to some random person. Newly moved in I didn't want arguments on my doorstep and denied having them when it wasn't the named person trying to collect. Weird how none of the police on this thread mentioned this.

And how are you supposed to send things back to Next etc if you don't open up things to dig out the returns label?

We do have a faint suspicion that they may have opened the parcels and then panicked when there was so much attention in getting them back. So they sent them back to Next to cover themselves. They’ve been in the flat for exactly five days, so not inundated with my daughter’s mail. They just made it all much more complicated than it needed to be by not engaging with the neighbour or me, but they came good in the end,

I'm glad it all worked our well @PerseverancePays but I think you are being unreasonable to still be ascribing malice to the tenants actions.

From their side, they received a parcel for someone else and someone in their household (accidentally or otherwise) took it in. They then had neighbours trying to collect it on behalf of the owner, and then some other random person, claiming to be the owners mother, leaving notes and knocking on their door to try and claim it too and then the neighbour also coming back to hassle them about it again. Under those circumstances they may have felt like it was a bit weird/suspicious that so many different people were trying to collect a parcel on someone else's behalf and were concerned that they may end up in some sort of scam - one person collects "on behalf of the owner" and then the owner turns up the next day and kicks off that they gave the parcel away and makes a report of theft, as there is proof of delivery to them but the tenants have no proof of who they gave the parcel to they would be liable etc. - and decided to just deny all knowledge until they could return it officially to get rid of the people who were hassling them.

If that was me I would also have just returned the parcel rather than deal the hassle of making sure they gave it to the correct person considering that in the space of 48 hrs they had two visits from their neighbour and two visits from you, neither of whom are the owner. Especially if they have only been in the flat for a few days they may have not wanted to set a precedent that they would go through this rigmarole repeatedly if your DD forgot to update any other addresses.

them denying receiving it is the best thing for you i think. get next involved as the parcel has gone missing. next will either refund you or send the courier round to argue with the neighbour. any police involvement or further action will be against the neighbours who havnt got the parcel. it will probably force them to give it up.

I couldn't imagine my Next courier going round to argue with the neighbour. They are usually employed by Hermes and they are aren't employed to resolve disputes. The parcel was delivered and delivery was verified. It won't be resolved by a courier.

*Hopefully all the people who were accusing them of theft will think twice before doing so again.
*
I thought they'd tea leafed it. But I'm pleased it's worked out otherwise. But not quite sure what you mean "about thinking twice etc". I don't randomly go round accusing people of theft. 🙄😫

They don't have to inconvenience themselves for someone else's fuck up.

Nope course not. But they DID. Because it's err, neighbourly. 🙄

@ChainJane

I did something like this a few years back. I went back to the house 3 or 4 times and finally they handed the parcel over, all opened and (as a non smoker!) smelling awful.

Go round, be nice, show the photo, ask if they've seen the parcels & mention you've been advised to report it as theft etc. My neighbours signed for & nicked my delivery using their real name .I got a refund as my signature was clearly not the one given & identified them ( I took pictures of their unopened post to prove their name matched the signature).

I'm so pleased to hear this OP.

I thought they'd tea leafed it. But I'm pleased it's worked out otherwise. But not quite sure what you mean "about thinking twice etc". I don't randomly go round accusing people of theft. 🙄😫

Except you did accuse them of theft.

It makes me wonder when so many people think the worst if they’re just manifesting what they might do as the tenant in that situation, because I’d think what would I, or anyone I know do which is why I thought this whole situation was irritating for the OP but unlikely to be master criminals.

The new tenants did nothing wrong, moral of the story be a bit more clued up if you’re spending £200 on a delivery.