Parcels left on doorsteps snatched within minutes | News

Molly Ceglowski was watching a film with her family when she got an email telling her that a parcel had been “successfully delivered”.

The message included a photograph showing the package, containing a pink birthday dress for her daughter Martha, 4, on the doorstep.

By the time she got downstairs four minutes later it was gone. “I got the email at 6.37pm and by 6.41pm it had disappeared,” Ceglowski said.

“There were four of us in the house, lights blazing, but the driver hadn’t rung the bell or knocked.”

The radio producer, 36, from west London, is among thousands of online shoppers who have been targeted by parcel thieves.

In residents’ groups on Facebook and Nextdoor, posts alerting neighbours to recent cases of “porch piracy”