Courier company took our items instead of their customer’s

Sandtree

bmxsummoner said:
I don’t believe the company with whom the courier have the collection booked is able to shed light on the matter of my items’ whereabouts. At any rate, this has now been reported to the police.

Other than they are the one with the relationship with the delivery recipient and could have confirmed if the courier came back to collect the parcel and therefore if the customer saying they received their box of sweets could well be true.

Will be interested to hear the level of engagement you get with the police... my experience is that its mainly about giving a crime reference number for your insurance.

Manxman_in_exile

bmxsummoner said:

A courier company driver took some equipment of ours by mistake — he was supposed to pick up for another company. We have no dealings with them and only found out the couriers took them after reviewing cctv footage.
...

These are items of equipment we use in our business, about £170 worth besides the loss of productivity we have already suffered.
...

I'd be making it very clear to the courier company that if they haven't within the next n days either (a) returned the kit to you fully intact and in working order, or (b) otherwise put you back in the position you were in before they unlawfully "took" it, that I would be suing them for the cost of replacing the kit plus any other business costs and/or losses you have suffered as a result of their wrongful action.  Make sure you retain any evidence or admissions that they took it and any evidence of what this has cost you in terms of lost production, loss of profit, additional costs etc.

(I'm not sure what period you should tell them for "n days".  As they appear to acknowledge taking the kit but appear to have no clue where it is - why don't they? - I'd be inclined to suggest a short time-scale, but I don't know.  48 hours?  72 hours?  5 days?  By 9am next Monday?  7 days?  If that doesn't hurry them along be prepared to issue a Letter Before Claim to them and if they don't comply with that go ahead and sue them for all your losses and extra costs).

You've not mentioned claiming on your insurance.  Are you not covered or don't you want to claim?

I agree with Sandtree that I don't understand why you haven't asked your neighbouring company (who I presume the courier was meant to be picking up from) what, if anything, was delivered to their customer?  I'd want to know if only to have a fuller picture of what has happened here - and how it happened.

I also wouldn't expect the police to do anything other than issue a crime reference number and possibly carry out a very cursory investigation to make it look like they were doing something.  I don't think you'll resolve this without threatening to sue the courier company and carrying out that threat if necessary.  Don't expect police involvement on its own to help you.

The only question would be is it worth suing for £170 of kit.  Your decision...

NBLondon

Sandtree said:

Do you think the courier... as in the guy physically doing the job... has a clue about what he is picking up? Would have thought most courier firms would actually want to keep them in the dark so that the boxes containing high cost tech, jewellery etc cannot be easily identified for "losing"

I think the courier operative should be able to tell the difference between a labelled, boxed item  and an unlabelled, unboxed piece of equipment.    And if they were expecting to pick up unboxed items, their instructions would specify what it is.  And they would ask where it was?

This is only a forgivable mistake if the instructions said "Collect a Bloggs-type whatsit from Unit 2" and they inadvertently walked into Unit 3 and picked up the wrong whatsit and slapped a label on it at a time when no-one was in Unit 3 to say "No, we've not booked a courier".  The OP has already said these are two quite different companies.

And now the courier company has admitted picking up the wrong item from the wrong address - the onus has to be on them to make the appropriate restitution.

HeinzVarieties

The criminal law advice in here is even worse than the civil law advice filed out.

This is not theft, there is no mens rea.  Without that any accusation of theft falls flat.  Mistakenly taking an item is not theft.

It's no wonder the Police have no time to investigate real crimes when they're wasting time filing paperwork for non-crimes.

Sandtree

NBLondon said:

Sandtree said:

Do you think the courier... as in the guy physically doing the job... has a clue about what he is picking up? Would have thought most courier firms would actually want to keep them in the dark so that the boxes containing high cost tech, jewellery etc cannot be easily identified for "losing"

I think the courier operative should be able to tell the difference between a labelled, boxed item  and an unlabelled, unboxed piece of equipment.    And if they were expecting to pick up unboxed items, their instructions would specify what it is.  And they would ask where it was?

This is only a forgivable mistake if the instructions said "Collect a Bloggs-type whatsit from Unit 2" and they inadvertently walked into Unit 3 and picked up the wrong whatsit and slapped a label on it at a time when no-one was in Unit 3 to say "No, we've not booked a courier".  The OP has already said these are two quite different companies.

And now the courier company has admitted picking up the wrong item from the wrong address - the onus has to be on them to make the appropriate restitution.

I would certainly hope for them to engage and check what they are supposed to be taking, which can certainly be unlabelled and potentially unboxed. Even if unboxed I wouldnt expect the courier person to be told what it is they were to be taking in advance of the job but just be carrying a range of appropriate packaging... certainly FedEx do.

Whilst its what I hope I am also painfully aware of how couriers can be, potentially in part explained by self employed nature with payment based on "success" rather than hours worked. My last London collection nearly went very wrong when an earlier courier had left a parcel on our doorstep without ringing the doorbell and I spotted the collection courier labelling it up and about to take it away rather than the parcel inside our home which was the one he was supposed to be taking... thankfully stopped him before he took it!

As to people saying something? We had a "sofa in a box" delivered to the wrong Unit 2 (we were Unit 2, Trading Estate, The Road and it was delivered to Unit 2 The Road instead). You'd imagine a set of 3 large boxes labelled "Sofa" would have triggered someone to say something but no the manager just signed for the parcels. 

Its still an unusual situation but far from unbelievably odd. 

Ergates

Sandtree said:

Do you think the courier... as in the guy physically doing the job... has a clue about what he is picking up? Would have thought most courier firms would actually want to keep them in the dark so that the boxes containing high cost tech, jewellery etc cannot be easily identified for "losing"

I think the courier operative should be able to tell the difference between a labelled, boxed item  and an unlabelled, unboxed piece of equipment.    And if they were expecting to pick up unboxed items, their instructions would specify what it is.  And they would ask where it was?

This is only a forgivable mistake if the instructions said "Collect a Bloggs-type whatsit from Unit 2" and they inadvertently walked into Unit 3 and picked up the wrong whatsit and slapped a label on it at a time when no-one was in Unit 3 to say "No, we've not booked a courier".  The OP has already said these are two quite different companies.

And now the courier company has admitted picking up the wrong item from the wrong address - the onus has to be on them to make the appropriate restitution.

In theory, I'd expect a customer to have boxed up and properly labelled any parcel meant to be picked up by a courier.

However, my experience in pretty much *all* other aspects of life tells me that people, very often, don't do what they're meant to do.   So I suspect it's not uncommon for a courier to turn up to an address expecting to pick up a properly boxed and labelled parcel for delivery, only to be handed a bunch of random items.  I expect that in those scenarios they're *meant* to refuse to pick up the items, but I can also believe that doing so will then trigger such a ridiculously laborious chain of paperwork that it's easier just to take the items and shove them into a spare box and label it themselves when they get back to the depot.

DB1904

HeinzVarieties said:

The criminal law advice in here is even worse than the civil law advice filed out.

This is not theft, there is no mens rea.  Without that any accusation of theft falls flat.  Mistakenly taking an item is not theft.

It's no wonder the Police have no time to investigate real crimes when they're wasting time filing paperwork for non-crimes.

There would be no paperwork to generate for this non crime so no time wasted filing it.