Neighbours and parcels

[LA1311]

My partner works from home and I’m currently home on maternity leave. Our next door neighbours are aware of this, they are young and both work full time.

Nearly every day we are getting parcels for them, it’s getting beyond a joke now. I’ve I’m not home my partner, keeps being disturbed from his work and having to go downstairs to answer the door.

It’s not too bad if I’m home, but it’s still a pain and multiple times if I’ve not answered the door because the baby is napping on me and I can see the delivery driver and know it’s not ours I’ve had the delivery drivers coming and banging on the living room window and waking the baby up.

If we’re not home, we’ve had delivery drivers searching all over our property to leave the parcel, because we’ve got a garden and a side entrance.

I didn’t mind taking the odd parcel for them but this is getting silly now.

It’s not even like they come and collect the parcels from ours, they will sit at ours until we take them around to them. She must know that they have been delivered because she will have had notifications.

AIBU for refusing her parcels and asking her to leave delivery instructions not to leave parcels with us?

I work at home and got so sick of opening the door every five minutes, then no one bothering to collect them. So I've got a sign on my door now, saying no parcels.

My parents neighbour had put my parents address as an alternative delivery address without asking, and also didn't come to collect. My parents now refuse their parcels. No one should take you for granted.

I was in a similar situation when I was on maternity leave a few years ago. I’d be trying to get the baby down for a nap or something, door would go and I’d run down just to take in someone else’s parcel. I’d see the driver leaving a note at the house and they still wouldn’t come to collect. I’d end up with a pile of parcels for neighbours who CBA to get them and seemed to expect me to deliver them! I didn’t deliver them ever so maybe they realised that they shouldn’t leave them with me.

But why does a reason need to be given why is no not enough?

I live in a ground floor flat with a common outer front door opened with a fob or by pressing the doorbell for a particular flat and having them open the door using the button inside the flat. Delivery drivers often ring my bell, or even bang on my window with parcels for other flats, knowing that I'm usually in. I now tell them to leave the parcels outside if the addressee is not in.

Let them collect the parcels for a start - why are you taking them over? Understand if it’s a space issue - in which case just tell the driver no,

If your on mat leave - blame the baby. Pop round and say you can't keep opening the door as you're feeding / changing nappies / napping. Could they get a safe box please?

Go over there, preferably with a screaming baby and say enough already. Or take them, put not at this address, and shove back in the mail box. Stop taking them around, let them pile up and tell them, this one came at 12pm and woke the baby, this one came at 4pm and I had to stop feeding, this one came at 5pm when on the phone… put it back on them that they are being selfish.

My neighbour has been known to just put my house number as the delivery address. Never asks. When his girlfriend (who doesn't even live there) was having her house done up everything came here. We refused some because we had no idea who the person they were addressed to was. It's calmed down a bit now but it's still once a week ish.

They’re not being selfish though, at least not in the delivery times. It’s not their choice when things get delivered/ to which neighbour. Responding like this would only come across as baby-induced craziness.

The only ‘selfish’ (although really it’s laziness) is not collecting on time, although no doubt that would also be very inconvenient for the OP given bedtimes etc.

OP should just put a note on the door as suggested upthread.

Absolutely this^
we just ordered something from Amazon and as I’m not sure I will be at home I chose to delivery it to a drop off point.
Put a note on your door OP and don’t take any more parcels. All sides will learn fast.

Put a sign up, "No parcels for any other address".
I wouldn't dream of tolerating this.

Refuse the parcels. If I’m not going to be in I know that I can collect them when I get the calling card. I don’t expect my neighbours to accept them but it is nice when they do. It’s really annoying when I get a neighbours parcel and I’m on a Teams call though and I remmeber it annoying the hell out of me when I had a baby, but it keeps me talking the neighbours who I may not see or speak to for weeks otherwise.

They may not knock to collect the parcels because they know about your baby possibly being woke up, but it’s pretty rude. I’d hoard all the parcels until they get them if there’s a next time.

Note on the door not to ring or knock as you have a sleeping baby and you cannot take parcels for neighbours.

Refuse them!!
I'm also on mat leave and the neighbours obviously know - I must have had hundreds of black friday/cyber monday deliveries that sat in the hall until I sent DD round with them to about four different neighbours.
I started refusing them after the second week becuase I noticed the drivers were coming direct to me - which means people had specified for them to do so!

Urgh. We had this. The final straw was when DPD said “you’re down as the person to deliver to!”. We hadn’t been asked, it was just assumed. I stopped accepting parcels. It was a shame because if they had asked I would have been fine with it. It was the assumption!

We get a fair number of parcels for our neighbours - probably because there's almost always someone in (WFH). We don't mind taking them in for the neighbours on either side: they always come around to pick it up as soon as they're back, and they reciprocate on the odd occasion we're not in. But we had to start refusing for one of the houses a couple of doors away....they'd never come and pick the parcels up so they could be sat there for days until we got fed up and took them over ourselves (what's more annoying is that we'd seen them walking past our window numerous times, but still they didn't bother collecting). So now we just ask the couriers what number its for before accepting the parcel.

Or ring their bell continuously when you take the parcels round just after one of the baby’s 4am feeds…..

Just put a note on door saying parcels for this address only baby and wfh

problem solved

Yes it’s super cheeky. I think for something important it is ok to ask a neighbour if they would take it in; but not if you are constantly getting them.

What I would say, op, is sometimes it is the courier co doing it to meet their delivery quotas and not the neighbour asking. I actually used to give a “ do not deliver to neighbour” instruction and they STILL dropped it to the neighbours rather than return.

I’d refuse to take them in, especially as the neighbours aren’t even bothering to come round to collect them. If it’s regular delivery drivers they should get the idea soon enough that there’s no point asking you to take the parcels.

We get delivery men asking us to take in parcels for our neighbours sometimes, and I don’t mind taking them in for the neighbours who’ll come round promptly to get them, but we have some neighbours who wouldn’t collect them at all - every time the parcel would sit there until DH got fed up and took it round to them - so I won’t take their parcels in anymore.

Put a note on your door. "No neighbours parcels please."
Sorted.

Did they ask you if you minded?
If they did then you would not be unreasonable to talk to them and say it's not manageable anymore because of work and the baby and not having space for the parcels.
If they didn't even ask then refuse to accept them, or tape a note to the door as PP have suggested. They will get the message after the first few times.
Definitely don't take anything round there anymore, they need to come and get them.

Just refuse. I have one neighbour that I will refuse to take parcels in for. They wouldn’t collect from us, we would see them in their house and when we knocked they wouldn’t answer, then they put a note on their door saying to deliver parcels to us. We were shift workers and not happy about it. Now I apologise to the delivery driver but say no. All the other neighbours say no too. I will take in for other neighbours though, but it doesn’t happen often.

Pop a sign on the door ‘Baby sleeping. Please only knock with parcels for our address. Thank you’
It’s completely reasonable to just say no of course though.