20yo DD was home alone- 2 Proovia delivery came into house and stood over her until she transferred £60 into their own bank account- raging at response

[fanothetan]

Delivery came significantly earlier than agreed, and these men were angry that I had not answered the phone. I work in CAMHS and never take my phone into clinics- . beside the point anyway, I had no reason to think I needed to.
DD knew nothing about the delivery so totally blindsided by how they were behaving. From their demeanour she assumed I had messed up. They brought the item upstairs (I’m third floor) came into the hall and demanded £60 because they had been paid to deliver to the first floor. True, but would not have been an issue if the delivery has arrived at the agreed time. They stood over her while she transferred it on her phone. Understandably she felt scared and did not argue with them, which was the right thing to do.
The response feels like a parody. I phoned and repeatedly ‘corrected’ with variations on ‘your adult daughter’ ‘yes, but she is an adult’. The initial reply to an email was a bald ‘the transaction was cancelled by you’. This was untrue and anyway are either of these responses the point?
After providing evidence and much to-ing and fro-ing there’s no dispute this happened and they say the driver no longe works for them. Having said they would refund the money, they are now saying they won’t, and asking why it’s taken so long to request a refund. Now it’s only £60 and hones, I honestly could not care less, but it speaks volumes and makes me extremely skeptical that any action was taken by them to address this.
The question is can I do anything? I have one of their full names from the bank transfer and their phone number from the repeated phone calls. Taking it to the police seems trivial if it’s about £60 but it’s not, it’s about grown men intimidating a 20 year old girl in her own home. It’s about an employer who clearly give no fucks at all about this and is happy to prevaricate and hand out platitudes rather than respond appropriately.

AIBU to not just suck it up and accept this is how things are? Or should I post the entire email thread which would be hilarious were it not so totally enraging? If there is a constructive way to get this addressed I might be spared an ulcer.

It was a table- hence why my husband and I had arranged to be back home to bring it up

And to deliver it at the time agreed. Yeah I’m a total cow for expecting them to arrive within the 4 hour window agreed. Totally unreasonable.

Sleeping StandingUp beat me to it...some posters on here today have decided to press Pause on reading comprehension. It's simple enough - the delivery men did not do as requested, they broke their contract in effect, and they or the sellers need to put that right.
Fanofthetan and her DD did nothing wrong.

The delivery was early. Had it been on time my husband and I would have been home and brought it up. I would have been happy for them to rearrange the delivery which was what the messages suggested would happen if they couldnt contact me. Despite this, they went ahed anyway.

i never get heavy stuff delivered to my floor if possible, can’t be bothered with the inevitable moaning.

Thank you! I’m amazed how hard it is for some to understand. Tne problem was the behaviour- if they hd turned up early but been civil, there would be no issue.

I’m appalled that so many people think objecting/hiding in the toilet/refusing would have been a safe option. And the ‘overreaction’ brigade remind me of the ‘but what did she do?’ ‘Can’t take a laugh’ ‘she should have been more careful’ responses from the apologists for male violence. The only reason this a problem is because 2 men decided to be aggressive.

Unless Im missing something, and I might be, you ordered an item. It was delivered. The charge for either the table, delivery or both was £60. You werent in and not contactable but your daughter was in, so she took delivery of the table and had to pay £60 for it because thats the cost

Whats the issue?

You pay her back presumably?

They didnt deliver at the aggreed or assumed time but thats delivery people for you unfortunately. Good job someone was in to take delivery of it.

How did they behave aggressively?

They demanded the money that they were due for the delivery

We have a secondary account of what happened from someone who wasn't happy about the situation

"Standing over" and "intimidating" and "demanding" could easily be "two men who happen to be bigger than her and who are intimidating because they are male asked for the money they were rightfully owed"

If you feel you were treated unfairly then you go to Citizens Advice, that's what they're there for

If have told them to fuck off as well tbh

Yes this is what I dont understand. I dont know what proovia is, assume some sort of delivery company

So they delivered an item and it needed paying for?

And?

Hard to know whether to laugh or cry reading this.

Huge sympathies to you OP, you have shown remarkable patience.

Can you write them a really negative review about it?

I was going to say the £60 was fair enough if you’d given them the wrong floor (minus the intimidation obviously!) but the problem seems to have stemmed from them coming at the wrong time, which was on them.

I guess they didn’t know that you’d deliberately ordered to a lower floor planning to take it up the rest yourself (with your DH) - they probably get some people just doing that and hoping to get away with it.

But no excuse for intimidation.

They shouldn’t have been early or at least asked if it was ok to deliver early. It might have helped if your dd had known the plan so she could have said that they couldn’t deliver early.

I can’t believe some of the responses here. It makes no difference how old she is, how many floors there are in your house, or when the delivery was booked for. A man took an opportunity of a lone woman at home and intimidated her into a scam. She did exactly the right thing for her safety. I would report this to the police. The delivery contract is the seller’s responsibility, so all the rest is excuses.
i am sorry she had this experience and I hope she is ok.

Plus OP asked for the order to be delivered to the first floor. Delivery contracts often state that you have to pay more if delivery is awkward in any way, eg. to a higher floor. The £60 was for the extra two floors that OP didnt want as she and DH were going to do that bit.

But it wasn’t coercive. It was the charge for carrying a heavy item up 2 flights of stairs which the OPs adult daughter asked them to do. She may not have realised that the company charged extra but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to pay. She was taken back as her mother had not let her know to expect the delivery. It sounds as though she felt intimidated by the gender and physical characteristics of the delivery men. They didn’t threaten her - they merely asked for their fee. She could have called her mum to clarify but her mum doesn’t answer the phone.
I’m also struck by how the OP infantilises her adult daughter.

And they wouldn’t have charged £60 for leaving it on the first floor. The person who accepted the delivery ( the adult daughter) asked them to bring it to the 3rd floor which they did and then requested payment to driver ( as is in conditions on company web site)

Um, being in a work environment where you can’t have a phone with you isn’t always avoidable…And if the delivery was scheduled for later, OP probably didn’t believe she had any reason to worry.

No idea about the ins and outs of the delivery company and how they operate though. A lot of this I guess depends on whether the delivery guys directed her to transfer to the company account or not (and this should be clear from how the transaction appears on her account). And even if that bit was conducted as it should, probably worth putting in a complaint with the company about their attitude at least. Good luck.

I’m not blaming her at all! Where have I blamed her?

What I’m taking issue with is the OP (and other posters) implying that her age is in any way relevant to any of this or somehow makes it worse, when it isn’t and doesn’t.

Dear god.
The delivery had been paid for, the delivery time agreed. The issue was delivering it out with the time agreed and the subsequent aggression. They told her about the extra £60 once they were in the house. They could have delivered it another day.

It was absolutely to the individual. For fun, here’s the screenshot and for those who fancy themselves as part time sleuths, I will get in front of the inevitable gotchas!

• yes the transaction did go through at about 7.15
• the arrived around 7
• the agreed time was between 8pm and midnight.
• this was set by the delivery company, not me.
• and yeeeees the CAMHS I work in does so late clinics because we are actually quite swamped.
• there are intermittent waitlist initiatives where we see patients outwith usual work hours.
• if anyone need further information, the current initiative is to address the backlog of initial assessments for asd/adhd.
• pretty sure this will kick off a barrage of reasons this is not true from people who are armchair diagnosticians but hey ho.

So it was only one hour earlier?

Or 7am?

I know! It’s hard to know if these are a windup or if there are cognitive ‘challenges’ at play here. I’m not joking- it’s genuinely concerning that there are some real struggle with processing the facts, even when they have been stated repeatedly.

Maybe bots have infiltrated this most sacred of spaces. There are some manosphere type views that seem to ignore the fact that because men harm women, two unfamiliar angry men in your home would naturally provoke fear.

My favourite thus far is ‘he can’t help his build’. No, indeed he can’t but I’m sure he was aware how two angry, strange men would be perceived by a lone woman in her own home. As I unfortunately have to reiterate more often than than I would wish, the only risk factor in rape/sexual assault/and most assaults is that a man decided he wanted to rape or assault a woman.

My daughter is well aware of that and acted in line with the experiences of her peers and herself in doing what it took to get them out of the house.

But an hour earlier than the very start of the delivery window. I really don’t think OP can be blamed for assuming it was fitting around her work commitments fine and the lack of access to her phone wouldn’t be an issue.

As the payment was made to the delivery guy himself then, your first step is definitely reporting it to Proovia (with screenshots of the transaction), see what they do/say, then look into Trading Standards etc, and/or maybe the police or Report Fraud if the guy was demonstrably making out that the payment was part of the standard process, rather than to him personally.

A lack of communication results in a grown woman paying a delivery fee as per the T&Cs of the courier company. That's it. Six pages of drama over a complete non-issue.

You can't receive many deliveries if you're so taken aback at the fact that one turned up an hour early. That's life. You should have given DD a heads up just in case.

But delivery times can change to a little early
I had one yesterday that was expected 15:30 - 16:30 and then changed to 15:00 - 16:00

If someone wasn't in, a delivery was missed or refused then it can make others early