I've seen the reception accepting orders before, they simply take the parcel, sign for it and put it behind them (or if small enough, in the letter boxes for the students living there), and notify the students by popping in a slip in the letterbox to say they have a parcel. In this case, the delivery was accepted, when it shouldn't have, and I assume whilst sorting out the parcels, the receptionist realised it was meant for the house next door to the flats. I imagine their protocol, with wrong deliveries, would be to ring the courier company and ask for them to collect it. But with our house being right next door, such a protocol would be pretty useless, as it could just be directed to us within 30 seconds. So any guidelines, I'd have thought, would be excusable to ignore in such a scenario. Like I said, I don't see it escalating to such a stage where an employer gets involved. Or if anything, in the past 24 hours, Amazon Logistics could've gotten in touch with the receptionist, who said they handed it over to someone who claimed to live at my address and Amazon came to a decision to issue a refund based on how unreliable that process might be, but not giving shit to the receptionist, as it wasn't meant to be delivered there in the first place, but was.
I understand your points but - are you trying to prove a point with Amazon, or did you just want the money? I mean, if you're trying to 'punish' them for delivering the package to the wrong address in the hope it doesn't happen again then I sort of understand it, but it's pretty standard delivery protocol to deliver to a neighbouring address if the addressee isn't in to accept an order. I regularly have stuff delivered to a neighbour that I then pop over to collect (though normally the delivery company notify me of this with a card). Is there not a chance that the receptionist or someone else would have attempted to deliver your parcel later if your friend had not noticed it and picked it up? And if so, what would have been the problem? As far as I can see the person most at fault was the receptionist for handing over a parcel to a stranger with no proof of identity but I know you're not trying to have a go at her.
Re your points on the "legal standpoint" - you are very much NOT in the right with regards the law. When you purchase something from Amazon you enter into a contract with them for the provision of the item you paid for. You paid, and you now have the item, so both sides have delivered their contractual promises, however fortunate it might be that the item ended up in your possession. Their attempt to deliver was fairly reasonable too.
You have the package you ordered and you have informed Amazon that you have never received it, and obtained a refund. You can moralise it however you like but you have lied to Amazon about what has happened and obtained a refund fraudulently. You know this to be true because you neglected to mention the part of the story where you received the package to them in your correspondence. Why not just email Amazon and tell them the truth, saying that you're disappointed that your package was incorrectly delivered and the fact that you obtained it owes more to luck than anything else, criticize their delivery company and let them take it from there? They might have offered an apology or even a voucher which would surely have been the fairest outcome in the circumstances.
You won't get into trouble because they can't prove anything. I realise the above comes across as a bit preachy which was not my intent - just trying to be clear on the legal point and wonder why you did it really. At the end of the day, Amazon are an easy target because they're an enormous company with deep pockets, but it is what it is.
