A frustrating story about doorstep milk delivery

We tried a doorstep milk delivery. It did not work out. Here’s the whole sorry story.

A couple of years ago in a bid to start to reduce our plastic use I signed up for a doorstep milk delivery. The milk would be delivered in glass bottles. No more plastic – yay! This was supposed to be an easy swap and it was in the beginning. Milk was delivered twice a week and the only adaptation we had to make was to remember to put the milk bottles out the night before the twice-weekly delivery. We remembered most of the time. Deliveries were organised online and I could pause the deliveries whilst we were on holiday and we were given double amounts on the previous delivery if one of the delivery days fell on a bank holiday.

It went well for quite a long time. And then there would be a bottle missing from the odd delivery. We thought nothing of this and nipped out to top up with milk from the supermarket. We let the delivery company know. They apologised and refunded us.

Then our deliveries started being short more frequently. Again we let the delivery company know and nipped out to top up with milk from the supermarket. But now it was getting a bit annoying all this nipping out to get extra milk. We talked to the delivery company who said that they might make the odd mistake but wouldn’t mess up on such a regular basis. It became apparent that someone was probably stealing the milk.

We made attempts to thwart the milk thief. We tried to go out first thing in the morning to get it in. This was OK in the winter months when the delivery would be later on but as it got lighter the deliveries got earlier and earlier and we weren’t prepared to get up ridiculously early to get the milk in. We then talked to the delivery company and tried to conspire to hide the milk in different places in the front garden. This worked for a while but then the milk thief cottoned on and the milk started to go missing again.

The situation became farcical. We were paying for milk to be delivered and then having to pay out more money to go out, often at inconvenient times, to get more milk from the supermarket (which was obviously in plastic bottles). I also began to feel a bit unsafe knowing that there was someone coming onto our property in the middle of the night/early morning. We have a gate that you need to open to come up our front path, we are overlooked by a block of flats and we live on a main road. All things which would seem to deter someone coming onto your property but obviously not the in case of our milk thief.

So I called the delivery company and stopped our deliveries. We have reverted to getting milk in plastic bottles from the supermarket. Which of course we were doing anyway when the milk was going missing. But now it comes with our weekly supermarket delivery. I’m very frustrated that it had to end this way and I’m upset when I see those plastic bottles in our recycling box. But I don’t want to think that this is something that we’ll never try again. I’ve looked into lockable boxes but I don’t seem to be able to find one that you can leave open but then locks automatically when you close it. However, I will keep trying to find a solution and hope that we can start milk deliveries again.