Help! Our Neighbors Keep Stealing Our Packages. They’re Strangely Targeting a Specific Item.
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Dear Advice ,
We’re caught in a strange and stressful neighbor/package theft situation, and my husband and I are at odds about how to handle it.
We live in a duplex. The other half is owned by a neighbor, who rents it out. Currently, a couple in their 50s—“James” and “Helen”—are the tenants. When they first moved in, we tried to get to know them, but they brushed us off, so we left them alone. Things were fine… until recently.
My husband’s elderly mother lives with us, and this year she began needing specialty incontinence underwear. They’re not the kind you can get at a drugstore, so we order them online from a medical retailer. After the third package, anything delivered when we weren’t home started disappearing. Oddly, nothing else we order online has ever been taken.
Recently, my husband got a free Ring camera through work. When we checked the footage, we were shocked to see James and Helen taking the packages. Even when more expensive-looking deliveries sit on the porch, they only go after these. We’re furious, but unsure how to respond.
I want to confront them directly, calmly and respectfully. My husband wants to “go nuclear” and call the police immediately. These packages aren’t huge in value, but they’re essential for my mother, and we can’t afford to keep replacing them. And we live right next door—it’s such antisocial behavior.
How should we handle this?
—The Porch Pirates Are Inside the House
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