‘Scrap metal’ men

[Clockworksatsuma]

Two of these types have come into my back garden today and taken a boiler that had been removed to reinstall in a new location and some copper pipe that hasn’t been installed yet (we’re renovating). I’m so angry. Some people in our village have identified them as ‘just scrap people and making a living’ but how dare they come onto my property and just take! It feels like an invasion of privacy as well as the fact they’ve just stolen! I know I’m not really but surely I’m NBU here?

Of course it's stealing and ynbu. Would your neighbours agree if they'd strolled in the house and taken it off the wall?!

If they were legit they'd knock and ask if you had anything, or put a card through the door. Not just help themselves in secret.

I would be calling the police and reporting it!

Not quite the same but I had a skip last year that was at the very top of my drive, behind gates and with 2 cars parked in front of it. The scrap metal
man had taken all the metal out of it and left stuff all over the floor!

Whoa that's awful! If you leave stuff in your front garden, close to the boundary, then you can expect they'll take it, but not from your back garden, that's just theft! Sorry op x

We had them try to take a cooker that was being collected and luckily OH was outside and stopped them

The had the bloody cheek to say...its outside like that gave them the ok to take it. OH had to be quite forcefull

Not remotely unreasonable, if they were left in an enclosed rear garden then there’s no way they could or should have presumed that they were being left for collection. Can you contact them? If not then a call to police is in order. Boilers and copper piping are not cheap.

It's theft OP, total scumbags.

I had a guy walk into my garage when we were having plumbing redone. He was very belligerent. Fortunately my plumbers were on hand to see him off, but he had come through a gate, into the garage looking for stuff.

Fair game for anything left outside your boundary, if not, it is theft.

We had a large metal object stolen from the side of the house that we'd accidentally left for 5 minutes. It was pristine condition and nowhere near the road so clearly not left for them. Luckily I wrote about it on our street WhatsApp group and word got to the culprits and it was returned in the night!

When our kitchen was refitted they left the washing machine by the front gate- within ten minutes it had vanished. Don't leave anything metal outside unless you want it gone, they don't care if it's up for grabs Op