Man says his ex kept part of a misdelivered package — and one threat to call police pulled her former-cop father into the fallout
A Reddit user said a simple shipping mistake turned into a theft fight with his ex-wife after an Amazon order was delivered to her address instead of his. In a post later collected by Best of Redditor Updates, the man said he bought two video games during Black Friday, but the package was mistakenly sent to his ex’s home. He wrote that she initially seemed fine about forwarding it to him, but when the package arrived, one of the games was missing. According to the text exchange he posted, she then told him the missing game was her “tax” for helping him.
The poster said he first tried to treat the exchange like a joke, asking whether the game had been shipped separately, but the tone changed when his ex stopped responding and then got defensive on the phone. He wrote that she acted as if keeping the game was no big deal, while he saw it as stealing property that was still addressed to him. That was the point where he decided to raise the stakes.
According to the post, he warned his ex that he could involve her father, a former police officer with whom he still had a good relationship. He then called the father directly and told him his daughter had opened mail addressed to him and kept part of its contents. The Reddit user wrote that the father sounded disappointed and said he would speak to her. While waiting for a response, the poster said he also filled out a police report but stopped short of submitting it.
That was apparently enough to force a change. The man wrote that his ex called back, complained that he was making “such a big deal” over a video game, and said she would return it only if he apologized for inconveniencing her. He said he refused, told her to send the game back or he would submit the report, and that she quickly relented. In the post, he asked Reddit whether dragging her father into the dispute and threatening to go to police was too much. The response from commenters was largely on his side, and the post was judged NTA.
The story also gave readers a wider glimpse into why the former couple had split. In comments highlighted in the BORU post, the man said the marriage had lasted three years and that things changed sharply after a move to Maine. He alleged that his ex’s drinking, physical abuse, neglect, and fabricated stories about him had pushed him to leave and move back to Pennsylvania. He also wrote that the package dispute was “tame by her standards,” suggesting the argument over the game landed in the middle of a much longer pattern.
A month later, he posted an update saying he did get the game back and that it arrived still factory sealed, with no signs it had been opened or used. He also said his ex became unexpectedly cooperative and “very strangely submissive,” which he suspected was because of her father stepping in. The poster added that he thanked the father and even sent him money as a gesture of appreciation after commenters suggested it.
The public ending was small compared with the dramatic framing of the original post. There was no arrest, no court case, and no sign the police report was ever actually submitted. But that may be part of why the story stuck: it was less about a missing game than about how fast a basic property dispute turned into a replay of an older dynamic, with an ex-wife pushing boundaries, a father still acting as damage control, and the poster deciding he was done staying polite just to keep the peace.
What do you think — was threatening the police report enough, or should he have gone ahead and filed it anyway?
