Rant Amazon Delivery muck ups, honest people and moral quandaries.

Context:-

Bought a ps4, it was "delivered" up the road from my work by about 400m signed by "a pen" at a door number 8. Door number 8 relates to a house in which this guy delivered my shiny new toy. 400m from the industrial estate with big warehouse with the company name written on the side in 10 foot letters which was on the address.

It was meant to be delivered Friday, I receive the notification of delivery thinking that someone signed for it with a pen (see above) and thought, ty for the ps4 namaste.

I fly off the handle thinking that the underpaid delivery dude has had it away, proceed to tear through some poor amazon callcentre dude (I know I am a **** but I was irrational) get a refund and £20 for my efforts.

Cue today and some honest person who is named "pen" shows up at my work with about 1000 amazon packages which people at my workplace get delivered to work because our goods in team are nice.

They say they are investigating the issue, I am unsure of what in the **** to do as the stress caused by me buying a console has put me off the entire thing now, so what do I do?

Option A). deny all existence of it ever being delivered and get an incompetent delivery driver fired (The address and postcode was correct on the order).

Option B). Ring up amazon and demand they take it back at my convenience, keeping my refund


Help?

 

Don't exactly follow your story, but as far as I can gather the delivery driver delivered to the wrong address, you complained and got a refund, but now the recipient has kindly forwarded the package to you, so you have both the PS4 and the refund?

In that case, I'd take option B. I wouldn't go out of my way to return it to them, i.e. waiting in all day for a courier, but would happily return it. The delivery driver may have screwed up, but option A) isn't morally right IMO as you're effectively lying, and their job sucks enough as it is.

 

keep the ps4, and the refund.
Amazon are tax dodgers and are not short on pocket money anyway.

delivery driver should of got it to you correctly, he wont get fired ether way. They just deliver to where there computer says to.

 

Well, let's see. You have ended up with your money back, plus £20 from Amazon, and your PS4. Option A) seems to be more than a little naughty, doesn't it? Option B) is much more reasonable.

Not sure why this question needed to be asked, to be perfectly honest.

 

Option "B" is the honest one to go for and, as suggested above, I'm puzzled by your need to ask. Of greater concern is the question of why "Pen" keeps accepting delivery of packages to which he or she is not entitled?

 

Given the exceptional customer service I've had in the past from Amazon, I'd definitely go with option B).

There again, I can't think of a situation where I would ever go with option A). Maybe for an object under 5 quid where the time and effort is not worth it for both parties?

 

This one.

The delivery driver's ongoing employment is out of your hands. If s/he's been doing this a lot (and it sounds like they have) they're out on their arse regardless of what you do. If it's a one off nothing you do or say will affect his employment (I've done delivery driving, getting accused of theft is a weekly occurence).

Keeping the PS4 and the refund would be theft however, generally it is good to not be a thief.

 

Same sort of thing came up a while back with some groceries, IIRC.

Putting morality to one side, if you keep the PS4 at this stage then you are stealing it. It doesn't belong to you and you would be dishonestly appropriating property with the intention to permanently deprive the owner of it. I.e. theft.

You need to contact Amazon and be honest about what has happened, if you want to stay on the right side of the law. However, the chances are they'll never find out and nothing will come of it, so if you're into a bit of cheeky law breaking, now's your chance...

 

My morality got the better of me, I contacted Amazon and shipping it back.

I will however not distract the cat from scratching the box.

Thanks dudes. Will be leaving feedback to reflect how much of an arse some couriers can be.

 

I'm not sure it would be theft actually. As far as I can tell, the law is kinda fuzzy on if you're legally allowed to keep misdelivered property.

 

What are you basing this on? If you take something given to you in good faith by a delivery driver but you know you're not entitled to it, you're acting dishonestly. I'm not aware of any such exemptions to theft law. Not in the UK at least.

 

You have to take reasonable steps to return items. The exception is unsolicited items sent to you, which you can keep. So, since this PS4 was originally ordered by the OP, they need to return it - but entirely at Amazon's expense and at their convenience. However, if Amazon sent you a PS4 you never ordered and it isn't a mix up in an order you placed then you could keep it. Equally, Amazon would have to have sent you the PS4 for a reason rather than making a simple mistake.

So yeah, hardly anybody ever receives unsolicited goods.

http://www.thecomplainingcow.co.uk/all-you-need-to-know-about-unsolicited-goods/

 

Well now that that's sorted, on to the real pressing issue of these events

Was the honest person's name actually Pen? Like Andrew Pen or something? Your fourth paragraph seems to imply that it was.

 

The law is actually pretty clear.

If a company delivers items to you that you didn't order (unsolicited goods), you are allowed to keep them unless the seller/supplier/sender asks for them back. In which case they must organise pick up at their own cost. This only applies to items addressed specifically to you.

If you are refunded for an item that you did order that then arrives after you were refunded, you are obliged to notify the seller. It is the seller's choice whether you get to keep it free, have to pay for it or return it. Failing to notify the seller is classed as theft. Who pays for return shipping is between you and the seller, but it's normally the seller.

Keeping goods that were delivered to you by mistake and are addressed to someone else is theft, don't do that.

 

Morality aside, Amazon would have claimed against the carrier who delivered the parcel fairly soon after the issue first arose. So if you wish to be technical about it the item(s) in question actually belong to the carrier. The same carrier that caused the issue in the first place...

 

AFAIK most Amazon orders are fulfilled by Amazon logistics these days, so it's unlikely they would submit a claim against themselves...

 

I believe that Amazon Logistics are their overflow carrier (think a dude in his own car type of thing), they are still heavily reliant on their commercial carriers.

A.L. will undoubtedly get massive, but right now the big boys still do the lion's share of Amazon's deliveries.

 

Moral of the story, have your parcels carried by the national postal service and delivered at your local post office (Yes, I have a grudge against UPS & Fedex).

 

Same thing happened to me recently. I ordered a Nespresso machine, 480gb SSD and a case for my phone (£40). The delivery day came and it said "Signed for by Mike". I don't know any Mike. So I desperately started ringing doorbells and knocking on doors but it was kinda hard seeing as all there is around here are big flat blocks.

So I gave up, came home and rang Amazon. They refunded me on the spot.

The next day my doorbell goes and there's a guy at the door with a half opened brown box. I asked him who he was and he made his excuses and left. I bet he realised he could easily steal the items but didn't fancy a Nespresso machine so decided to come clean and give the items to me.

I went for option B. So Amazon are douches? they've always been fantastic for me. Plus, just because a company is a douche that doesn't give me the right to steal items. Nothing does, it's illegal and you are breaking the law.

Yeah, this. At the end of the day you know it's stealing. Not sure why you posted on a forum asking if it was OK ?

 

Just jumping in on the law side of things, it's not a criminal offence of theft. You haven't come into possession of either the refund or the PS4 through dishonest means. It's a misunderstanding. If you then keep hold of it, yes it is dishonest but the means in which you obtained it weren't.

If Amazon were to find out, asked for it back and you refused, they could look to pursue civil recovery. However there is a degree of embarrassment on their part and a few hundred quid is pocket money to them. I would still go with option B, get rid of it and buy it elsewhere.