Amazon Prime – Pain In The Bud

You’d think it would be relatively trivial to reunite a woman with her cat after an Amazon delivery driver stole the kitty on Dec. 11.

After all, the victim’s own Amazon Ring camera system captured video of the driver walking away with Piper the cat after dropping off a package. Amazon knows precisely who the driver is, where he lives and how to contact him, because he’s a contractor for the company.

And it’s difficult to imagine how it would stretch the resources of the Lakewood (California) Sheriff’s Department to send a deputy out to arrest the guy and retrieve the cat.

The driver picks Piper up by the scruff of her neck, which could cause serious injury in an adult cat.

This wasn’t a high stakes heist by pros with a plan to disappear.

It was a local delivery driver who made an impulsive decision to steal a cat from a customer.

Do the police really think the man is hiding out in a local motel with the shades down and the cat tied to a chair, cutting out letters from a magazine for a ransome note?

Getting Piper back matters very much to Diane Huff Medina and her children, who miss the chatty Siamese mix.

It doesn’t matter at all to the police or to Amazon, which finally issued a statement calling the theft a “horrible act” and saying it was cooperating with police.

“The Amazon Flex delivery partner in question is no longer eligible to deliver to our customers,” an Amazon spokesman said.

That doesn’t help Diane Huff-Medina get Piper back, nor does it help her reassure her children that the feline, who has been with the family for six years, will be returned unharmed.

“Every day they ask, ‘Is she back yet?’ It’s hard to tell them,”Huff-Medina told local media this week.

In our last post, we noted that in cases where people were reunited with their pets, they did not wait for Amazon or the police to act. Neither has the same sense of urgency as an animal’s own family, and unfortunately police are often reluctant to devote time or manpower to these cases because pets are considered property. When the most severe potential charge is petty larceny — which takes into account a cat or dog’s monetary value, but not its emotional value — stolen pets are considered minor crimes.

Huff-Medina has done well to shame Amazon and local police by going to the media and getting Piper’s story out there. We hope she gets good news soon.

Header image via Wikimedia Commons

In one respect, it feels unfair to blame Amazon for its employees stealing cats.

The company’s drivers make millions of deliveries to American homes, and the vast amount of time there are no problems.

On the other hand, this has happened so many times now that you’d think Amazon would make it a priority to tell its drivers: Do not steal cats from customers. It’s not acceptable, it’s traumatic for the cats and their humans, and it’s horrible PR for the company.

The latest incident involves a driver who was caught on camera this week stealing 18-year-old Murphy, who belongs to Kathy Souza of Somerset, Massachusetts. Security camera footage shows the driver retrieving cat food from her vehicle and chasing after Murphy, then disappearing.

Souza told a local NBC affiliate that neighbors at an AirBnB saw the driver steal Murphy. The driver allegedly told them she was concerned about the cat, that it “didn’t seem right to her and she was going to take it,” Souza said.

As of mid-morning Wednesday, Souza posted an update saying she was waiting at the Somerset Police Department, where the driver apparently agreed to return the cat.

Like so many others before her, Souza found Amazon tone deaf, minimally responsive and unhelpful.

“I spoke with someone at Amazon who asked, ‘Is the cat worth more or less than $200?'” an incredulous Souza wrote on Facebook.

A customer service representative also asked Souza to fill out a satisfaction survey, which mirrors the experience others have had when the company’s drivers have stolen pets. Amazon handles the cases as if their drivers stole or damaged property rather than taking living creatures often considered family by the people who love and care for them.

The company’s responses are similar to the way it handled the case of Feefee, a 13-year-old tabby cat stolen from a family in Everett, Washington, by an Amazon driver in late July of 2024.

In that case, Amazon offered to compensate the Ishak family by sending a stuffed animal resembling Feefee, and told owner Ray Ishak that the apologetic driver had contacted police to return the cat. That wasn’t true, and to make matters worse, the Amazon driver abandoned Feefee and wouldn’t tell the family where she’d dumped the cat. Ishak spent several days driving through his neighborhood and surrounding areas, looking for the driver’s car which was visible in his doorbell camera footage.

Ishak found his cat without Amazon’s help after a great deal of stress and effort.

Souza said she would post another update about Murphy “when I have him in my arms.”

Update, 2:05 pm: Souza has been reunited with Murphy.

In a statement, Amazon said the driver’s behavior doesn’t meet the company’s standards and promised an investigation, but a friend of Souza wrote on Facebook that it was pressure from social media posts and local news reports, not action from Amazon, that prompted the woman to return Murphy.

“Rescuing animals is honorable, but due diligence is imperative, and this woman did not do hers,” she wrote.

Murphy is well known among neighbors and doesn’t stray further than three houses from home, Souza wrote in an earlier post.

We’re glad Souza and Murphy have been reunited and this story has a happy ending.

As for the lessons learned here, anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in this situation should not wait for Amazon to act. The company won’t have the same sense of urgency, and its customer service staff aren’t trained or equipped to take the necessary steps, like liaison with local law enforcement.

In cases where people have recovered their pets, the common thread is that they took the initiative, used social media and local news to get the story out, and were relentless. Time is crucial, because in some cases delivery drivers will panic and abandon stolen pets.

Header image credit Wikimedia Commons