Who is the Delivery Person You’re Letting Into Your Home?

If someone asked you whether you’d let a total stranger into your home, someone neither you nor anybody else knew anything about, you’d probably be pretty quick to say no. But you do it all the time, without realizing the risks and the dangers, when you allow service people and deliver people into your house.

Not Who You Think They Are

Why do we let these strangers into our home to deliver products or fix whatever is broken in our house?

One reason is that they are cloaked in legitimacy by the companies that we think they work for, companies that are often large scale or big box companies. We imagine large companies carefully vetting delivery people, and making sure they’re responsible and safe—after all, these companies are too large to risk the bad publicity of an incident in someone’s home because of a delivery person.

But think again, because in many cases, the companies that you buy a product from, are not the same company hiring the delivery people that are coming into your home. Not only that, but the companies or the people themselves doing the deliveries may have little or no contact with the retailer you did business with.

Tragedies in Boca Raton and Chicago

Such was the case in Boca Raton many years ago, where an elderly woman purchased an appliance from big box retailer Best Buy.

She, like many of us, must have believed that it was Best Buy doing the delivery. But it would later be learned that it was a third party that did the delivery, a company that Best Buy exercised little control over. Worse, it would later be learned that the smaller delivery company did not do any or adequate background checks on their drivers.

On the day of the delivery, one of the delivery people—who, apparently and according to criminal records, had a long criminal record and a suspended license, and who was also high on cocaine at the time of delivery, severely beat the woman to death and set her on fire, inside of her home.

This isn’t the only time something this horrific happened. In Chicago, a Comcast delivery person murdered multiple people while inside their homes, doing installation work for Comcast. The man was actually employed by a smaller company, a company that Comcast contracted or did business with to do in-house visits and service calls.

Who is to Blame?

When these incidents happen, large companies try to point the finger at the smaller company that they contracted with to do the jobs. But the duty to deliver something into your home safely, is not one that can be delegated. Large companies cannot just turn a blind eye to the other companies they contract with, when those companies are putting strangers into customers’ homes.

Injured because of a criminal act that you think a company should take some responsibility for? Contact the Tampa personal injury lawyers at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian and schedule a consultation today.

Sources:

chicago.suntimes.com/2016/5/4/18392071/former-comcast-worker-guilty-of-killing-second-woman

usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/21/florida-man-delivery-best-buy-attacks-woman-sets-her-fire/2070514001/