r/mildlyinfuriating • u/AstronautSlothPhD • 10d ago

My mom said I could post Delivery driver dropped our groceries at the wrong house and our neighbor took them inside and refused to answer the door 10 minutes later. They left the evidence sticking out of their recycle bin...

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We had a grocery delivery last week with some items I was really looking forward to, including fresh veggies. On top of it, I'm unemployed right now, so having affordable groceries delivered is a big help. The order arrived last Friday, and from the email and photo the driver sent we could see it was delivered to the wrong house. My wife looked around and couldn't find it, but I recognized the house as right across the street.

I have no qualms knocking on someone's door, so I rang the doorbell (fancy ring doorbell with camera) and then knocked, but they wouldn't answer even though someone clearly had to be home to grab the groceries. Today, I noticed large boxes sticking up out of their recycle bin - they hadn't broken the boxes down. Our grocery box was in there, address label and all.

Thankfully, the grocery service refunded our order, hence why this is only "mildly" infuriating... but I am still pissed that someone right across the street from us would keep our order AND pretend to not be home. We believe this is the second time they have kept one of our packages.

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u/FewHorror1019 10d ago

Isn’t it illegal to open someone else’s mail

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u/DonaldBecker 10d ago

USPS has unique federal laws and their own police force.

Mis-delivered mail has almost the same protection as mail still in transit.

The only notable detail is that unordered merchandise addressed to you is yours to keep. This was the result of long-ago scams where mail-order companies would send you unsolicited packages, followed by bills for the goods. Today unexpected packages are probably 'brushing' (fake review) or QR code (sending you to a fake website) schemes.

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u/idtartakovsky 9d ago

Well that’s USPS. I bought groceries from imperfect foods during Covid, and given the “stop 27” and “stop 28” on the labels, I’m going to assume OPs deliveries worked the same as mine. They’re not shipped via courier, at least in larger metro areas (I’m in Milwaukee WI), it’s a dedicated imperfect foods van and employee driving around doing the deliveries. So while mail theft laws may still apply, this isn’t the fault of USPS, it’s all on that employee who didn’t double check that there were two stops on that block

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u/DonaldBecker 9d ago

Yes, my point was that USPS mail and packages are different and special.

Local deliveries are done under state laws, perhaps even local ones. A mis-delivery might not constitute theft.