Newspaper delivery company. What should I do?

[AlJalilia]

My DM is housebound and I live overseas. In order to help with the isolation, I set up a newspaper delivery service for her. I got the details from The Sun newspaper, who recommended this delivery company.

Over the year or so that we have had deliveries from them, they have got steadily worse. They are meant to deliver The Sun every day and Take A Break once a week. They were barely managing to deliver the paper twice a week and she didn’t get the magazine for months. Every time I complained they said they would “credit the account”, but they never did.

I then discovered that Mum was paying the delivery driver £5 a day to deliver her paper!!! This was on top of me paying for the service. If she didn’t leave £5 in an envelope, they wouldn’t deliver it the next day.

Now the company has changed to a new one but I STILL haven’t had a refund and they are STILL taking money from my account.

What do I do? I am so anxious about this. Should I contact The Sun as it was them who are promoting the company?

What delivery? They're not being delivered are they?

I think they are with the new owners

I'd still consider finding a more local news agents or something that still has a daily delivery, go via a local Facebook group if you have to. I bet they're more reliable and easier to get a hold of and they may accept payment after delivery, I know they used to but was about a decade since I last used a service like this.

I'd also find where I could leave an online review of the previous company, places like trust pilot, Google reviews and Facebook and be brutally honest that they were unreliable, no refunds and criminal delivery driver. I'd cut all ties with any company that could be related to the previous one, one business doesn't often pass business directly to a competitor in this way.

I'm not sure if it would be possible to but a charge back request in through your bank if you paid by credit card. I'd first try calling them again though (unless it's cost you a fortune from abroad) and have all the details at hand including exactly how much they owe you and stay on the line until you get a refund or they cut you off. Don't be rude but stand your ground and be firm and demand what they owe you be paid asap (I do expect they'll cut you off though).

I couldn't find ANYONE locally to deliver the paper. None of the local newsagents offered this service. The new company seem to be doing a good job, I am just angry about all the money the old company owe me for non-delivery. As well as all the money extorted from my poor mum, although I imagine they'd say it's nothing to do with them.

Does your mum have any support here?

If your mum was handing over £5 every day, and didnt tell you, then she really needs some help.

Contact adult social services. You cant leave her to manage things as she is making bad decisions, which is not her fault, but she needs some help.

Could she manage a tablet? A very simple one with a newspaper app downloaded and you pay the subscription fee?

If someone could set it up for her with parental locks so she cant hurt herself into any trouble, and could download whichever newspapers app you wanted then could she manage to charge it and use that for her paper?

@BeforeGodAndAllTheFish she doesn't have any support and neither does she want it. She has a laptop and an iPhone and she WhatsApp's like a young person. But she still likes to have her physical paper.

She might not want it but she is clearly vulnerable.

And this conman of a delivery driver knows it. That isnt a safe position to be in when she has no support here.

The police are hot on the scammers exploiting older people here so it might be worth contacting them, goodness knows how many people are being scammed.

The lady who owned our house before us got swindled by driveway people, she was confused and they kept turning up asking for money for work done when they didn’t actually do any. Our neighbours realised what was going on and contacted the police and they came out and dealt with it pretty quickly.