An Amazon customer who complained to the online retailer about a delivery driver coming into her home and masturbating in her bedroom is demanding to know how the man was allowed to return to her house two days later.
Spanish police have taken a suspected semen sample allegedly left by the courier as part of a continuing investigation into the incident.
The customer, a 72-year-old retired British social worker who lives in Spain and New Zealand, had ordered a mosquito repellant on Amazon Marketplace. Jane* said: “I will not be using Amazon again. I want people to know that it’s unsafe.”
Amazon said the courier was not one of its employees but a contractor for one of its local sellers.
The courier, a tall man in his 20s, arrived with the package at Jane’s home in a village on the Costa Brava, north-east Spain, at around 5pm on 15 July. She buzzed him in through a gate to her home via a video doorbell and asked him to wait.
After a trip to the bathroom Jane said she then found the man in her bedroom with his hand in his shorts. He had entered Jane’s house and walked through her kitchen and up her stairs into her bedroom, she said. “I was stunned,” she told the Guardian. “He was masturbating vigorously. He turned his back and it was apparent that he ejaculated. He shook his hand and when he turned to me his shorts were wet.”
She added: “I can think a lot of things I should have said to him now, but I was so shocked I just told him to get out immediately and I followed him out.”
Once outside, the courier asked for Jane’s ID number to register the package on an electronic device. He struggled to input the data correctly, which prompted his older colleague, who had been waiting in a van, to come to the door to ask about the delay.
Jane, who was awarded New Zealand’s order of merit for a charity work, said: “I told him: ‘Your colleague has done something very bad.’ My Spanish did not extend to the word masturbate.” The older driver said there was a problem registering the package before snatching it from Jane’s hands. Both men then left the property. She managed to photograph the van and its number plate before it drove away.
Jane reported the incident to the police and to an Amazon helpline. The call handler apologised to her for the “inconvenience”. She said: “I told her: ‘This is a police matter, it’s not an inconvenience. This is threatening behaviour by one of your couriers.’”
Jane’s anger at the company increased when two days later the same two couriers turned up at her door to deliver another Amazon package. “I felt very vulnerable, especially when he came back another time,” she said.
Jane said she addressed the older man by saying: “‘Your colleague masturbated in my house.’ – I knew the word by then – ‘and I’ve reported it to the police. He denied it. He said his shorts were wet after spilling a drink.” Before leaving, the older man threatened to denounce her to the police for making the accusation against his colleague.
On the second visit, her video doorbell captured an image of the suspected intruder, which she passed to the police.
A report into the incident by Spanish police, seen by the Guardian, confirmed that an investigation has been launched into Jane’s “report of a person entering her home without her consent and masturbating in front of her”.
Jane has been in correspondence with Amazon since the incident. In an initial message to its customer email Jeff@amazon.com – a reference to its chief executive, Jeff Bezos – she wrote: “Amazon should take immediate steps to safeguard their customers in a case such as this. Your helpline people were in not way equipped to deal such a situation of sexual abuse.”
Jane said: “I can’t imagine Jeff [Bezos] reading through complaints on his honeymoon. There doesn’t seem to be an adequate complaints system. There seems to have been no attempt to address what was a serious home invasion and sexual violence against me.”
“As they are making squillions out of this, they absolutely should be spending a good bunch of it making sure customers are safe in their homes.”
In another message to Amazon she wrote: “I cannot risk using Amazon again when the same courier may make the delivery and when they show such disregard for the safety and wellbeing of the customers.
In one of Amazon Spain’s replies sent to Jane on 18 July, it conceded that the incident was “extremely concerning” but it pointed out that the delivery service and personnel were not Amazon employees or contracted by Amazon directly.
It urged Jane to contact the seller and said it supported her decision to report the incident to the police.
In a statement Amazon said: “At Amazon, we take the security and protection of our customers and the communities we serve very seriously. This service was provided by a commercial carrier. We will keep investigating and clarifying the facts and we will cooperate with the parties that need our collaboration.”
* Name has been changed