A CHARITY volunteer from Basingstoke is sending a plea to retail giant Amazon after one of its delivery drivers backed into his family car - leaving it unable to start.

Steven Taylor was at home on Packenham Road in Kings Furlong when the incident happened, on February 7 at around 1.53pm.

However, the car park where his Toyota Estima was parked is not visible from his home, and the family usually use their back door to come and go, as it backs straight onto the main road.

It therefore wasn’t until five or six days later that Steven spotted the damage to his vehicle. Luckily, his neighbour - who is a mechanic - has a security camera which overlooks the car park, and caught the Amazon vehicle crashing into the parked car.

The footage shows the driver getting out of the vehicle to retrieve some pieces from the ground, before returning to the van and driving off. No report was made to the police or to Steven himself.

The 44-year-old said: “I was horrified. The speed with which the van comes out - they clearly were not paying any attention. What I found most disgusting was, when they hit the car, they got out and picked some stuff up, presumably identifying parts of their vehicle. So there was not any chance of them not knowing exactly what had happened.”

Steven and his wife volunteer for The Safe, a family support charity in Basingstoke, and use the vehicle to make deliveries of larger items needed by its beneficiaries, such as cots.

“It’s a nice big vehicle,” said Steven. “I work from home generally and my employer is quite flexible to allow me to do drop offs if needed. But all of that is blown away at the moment.”

As well as smashed fog light, scratched paintwork and a dent to the bumper, Steven’s vehicle currently won’t start. His insurance company has said it will write it off, but Steven would rather see Amazon cough up the “couple of hundred pounds” it would take to repair it.

He has been in contact with the company on numerous occasions over the past fortnight, and has been advised he has been sent emails - which he has not received - while the phone number provided for the claim team goes straight to voicemail.

“It’s been a battle. I get a feeling they are hoping they can wait me out and I’ll just repair it myself,” he said.

“But I hate bullies and I am ridiculously stubborn. I probably could fix it myself, but why should I?”

As well as chasing Amazon and working from home, Steven is home-schooling his daughter, 12, and son, nine - who have their own reasons for wanting the car to be saved.

Pre-pandemic, the family would go on regular driving holidays to Holland in the vehicle, and have grown attached to it.

Steven said: “Even if we wanted to write the car off, it looks a bit like Peppa Pig’s car, so my children immediately fell in love with it!

“That’s what’s mainly powering me, because my kids love it. It’s an important part of their childhood and a big part of our family identity and culture.”

Summing up his frustration at the “multi-million pound company who are digging their heels”, Steven added: “I am not asking them for thousands of pounds in compensation, I just want them to repair the car. I am baffled that this is not an open-and-shut case.

“Morals do not change because of the size of the company, if anything they should be more enthusiastic to promote good ethics.”

A spokesperson for Amazon UK said: “We are working closely with our delivery service provider to ensure this matter is resolved as quickly as possible.”