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.

I live in a third floor flat and have experience of these kinds of deliveries. It's clearly a scam. I have always paid in advance if there's an extra charge to bring the item upstairs. Even when paying in cash to the driver, they take the payment before doing anything.

Though £60 is not a huge sum, OP's daughter was the victim of a crime.

It's stated clearly on the T&Cs on Proovia website that an extra fee will be charged in this situation. It's not a 'scam'. It's a miscommunication between OP, her daughter, and the delivery company.

Jesus Christ. Read the messages. It was their BEHAVIOUR to a lone woman, something they'd have established when they turned up at the door with a table

I've taken a load of deliveries, none of them have ever felt the need to get aggressive with me to get wh as t they are entitled to.
The delivery was scheduled for X to the 1st floor. That didn't incur a charge. They text to say if you don't reply we'll reschedule.
She didn't reply.
They turned up early. They took it to a different floor that incurred a charge without checking. Having entered the house and established she was very likely alone they proceeded to act aggressively and demand they be paid money into their personal account.

They didn't check the delivery name to ascertain if the daughter was the purchaser. They didn't knock the door to see if she wanted it brought up for a few. They didn't reschedule.

They didn't do what their job was to the agreed terms and they made a vulnerable line woman feel she had to pay them money.

Being bigger and male and asking for money they are owed isn't aggressive or intimidating

Don’t agree with any kind of aggression. Lone women feeling intimidated is not ok but leading with and repeating that she is 20 might say more about why she felt so intimated - do you treat her like a child?

Have you got a quote/screenshot of this bit off the website?

Maybe bots have infiltrated this most sacred of spaces.
what else than a bot would use "most sacred of spaces" to describe MN 😂

a 20 year old is not a child.

OP you are very rude to everyone, but if you are so confidently arguing and ranting against everyone, why haven't you taught your own children to manage such situations?

a 20 year old is not a child, could very well live alone, and deal with everything alone. It's complete parental fail to have not prepared her! She could have children by now!

Of course, it's not acceptable to be intimidated and threatened, in or outside your own home, by anyone. That should not be tolerated, but that's not the point.

A 20 year old is not a child, if the delivery men were 20 year old, would you accept "oh but he's just a child, so what he did was ok because he's a child". Of course not, so you can't have it both ways.

Why the nit picking? Get a life

I was married with a mortgage at 20, definitely not a child.

Would I have been intimidated in these circumstances? Yes.

Would I still be intimidated in these circumstances many years later? Possibly.

I think the point isn't that your daughter is too young to make a transfer - the fight you should pick is that two men intimidated a lone woman (age is irrelevant) into transferring money into their accounts. Your DD was literally mugged. If I were in your shoes, I'd get my DD to say that and seek reimbursement or threaten to sue.

quite

the complaint would be valid regardless of the "victim", a young woman or your husband, your elderly father, you teenage son.

Playing the "my little child who is a girl" card is distracting from the real issue.

A 20 year old is not a child, but the one in question is still @fanothetan ' child!

Young people's brains are not fully developed until they are 25 - there is a reason that care leavers are supported until they are 25 - it is because it is understood that as young adults, they may still need support to find their way through life which is what the OP is doing with her daughter.

Every young person is different. I owned my own house at that age but I would have still been intimidated by two grown men demanding I transfer them money money and would have almost definitely sought advice from my mom!

You said: "Of course, it's not acceptable to be intimidated and threatened, in or outside your own home, by anyone. That should not be tolerated, but that's not the point."

That is exactly the point - whether it is the OP's 20 year daughter, a 16 year old child or a neighbor who has kindly agreed to accept a delivery. None of them are the people that the courier company had an agreement with.

They undertook a delivery outside of everything that had been agreed:

• They turned up early
• They delivered to the third floor when delivery was arranged for the first floor without the permission of the customer
• They delivered even though the OP did not answer her phone, despite them saying that if they could not contact her, the delivery would be re-arranged.
• They proceeded to intimidate a young woman, who was not the customer who had agreed the contract, into transferring them money.

The age of the OPs daughter, is important for context but has absolutely no bearing on the whether the delivery drivers behaviour was at best unprofessional and at worst, potentially criminal!

You are being completely ridiculous about the age.

A 20 year old, an under 25 year old, is just as adult as you and often more than many posters on here 😂

20+ year old can be fully trained and working medical professional , teachers, in charge of babies, of sick patients, or just driving heavy machinery or doing any adult thing any other adult does. The ONLY reason some professions don't have very young staff is because of the years of training needed, not the age in itself!

Let's not be so patronising, ridiculous and insulting in pretending they are children and their brain are not developed.

Or, if you genuinely believe they are, do campaign for marriage to be illegal under 25, age of sexual consent to be brought to a level of fully matured brain and so on

Sounds ridiculous? Yes, thought so.

I've just gone back through the OPs posts and I don't see anywhere where she has stated that her daughter is "my little child who is a girl".

She refers to her as a 20 year old girl, not child - which she is a legitimate way of referring to a young adult.

I suspect the company continuing to say that the OPs daughter was an adult was just in response to the OP talking about her daughter, so that they could potentially justify the charge, when the key point is that regardless of age, her daughter was not the customer with whom they had the contract.

Before reading this thread, I would have assumed that that response by the companies customer service representative would be unusual.

However, judging by the number of people on this thread who also seem keen to somehow excuse the behaviour of the delivery drivers and berate the OP based on the age of her daughter, then clearly while still incredibly odd and illogical, it wouldn't be unusual.

Oh Lordy. Are we go honestly debating the 24 hour clock? Of course it was 7pm.

@curliegirlie I have sent all of the evidence to Proovia. They are not disputing anything that happened, but they are not prepared to refund the money because they ‘have no way to get it back from the driver’

In all honestly I don’t care about the money at this stage but I think it communicates a lot about the company culture and their understanding of their responsibilities for their employees actions.

What confuses me is why they have created this additional hassle in a situation they accept happened. Surely they know that they can’t both say we accept this happened and say they bear no responsibility at all.

No, so we'll have to trust the woman it happened to who told her mother what happened. You don't know best just because it didn't happen to you and you weren't there. The woman who WAS there says they were angry from the outset, their anger was such she assumed her Mom had messed up and they stood over her whilst she transferred money
Do you really think that's acceptable behaviour from anyone? Add in their size, sex and number and it's not unreasonable for op to feel more vulnerable than she would at one equal sized angry woman.

You think every woman who is intimidated by angry men are at fault because their parents didn't teach them better?

Agree completely.

The expectations on under 25s is so incredibly low because of that shite attitude that they need mummy or daddy to hold their hands. They can’t be expected to do too much - like pay a bill, go to the doctors themselves, to sign a contract with a company for a service. They can’t cook, don’t understand how to manage their time, can’t handle change, don’t know how to change a lightbulb, need their clothes ironed.

It’s ludicrous. What do they think happens? You hit that magical 25th year and suddenly function as an adult?

The issue with non-functioning adults (excluding the bloody obvious exceptions) is usually that they’re a product of poor or inconsistent parenting.

The other poster talks about care leavers having help until age 25. That’s because they very frequently come from terrible backgrounds with absent parents, inconsistent care and/or issues like addiction in their home.

They don’t have that predictable, normal experience and therefore often don’t have the same chances as people who grow up at home. That shouldn’t apply to most people.

Thank you. It is nice to see that remains some sense and empathy from some posters.

Again, there’s more than a whiff of Andrew Tate’s mum in the very clear misogony of some here. I am starting to wonder if it’s Proovia. It would seem to be on brand given what we know.

But we are not hearing from the woman who WAS there

We are hearing from a mother who's angry on behalf of her daughter

A daughter who apparently wouldn't have been happy being asked to take the parcel in if she'd known so could well be pissed off that her mother didn't warn her and that she had to pay so is exaggerating slightly

If someone is owed money legitimately, they are going to stand there and wait for it to be paid. Do you think shop staff are standing over you when they wait for you to pay or is that intimidating too?

OP's behaviour on here could be described as aggressive, it's certainly resorting to insults and character assassination because people aren't agreeing or are trying to clarify what happened

If she brought that attitude to Proovia (which she probably did) then I'm not surprised they kept trying to clarify the situation fully and then just said what they thought she wanted to hear to get her to shut up and leave them alone

If there really was a case where the money was taken incorrectly, I would expect Proovia to have refunded it and dealt with it their side because of the reputation damage otherwise

More amused that anyone is surprised a 20 yo is not on mumsnet….

And you studied neuroscience where exactly @Kibble19 ?