BUSINESS BOSS TARGETED WITH DEATH THREATS
THE owner of a food delivery company which operates in Llanelli closed his business for a couple of days because of “relentless” abuse and death threats he says he has received online.
DeliverMe – set up in December 2017 – delivers food from fast food chains and more than 100 local businesses to Swansea, Neath, Port Talbot, Pontardawe and Llanelli.
Owner Aaron Davies claimed that, since day one, he had been receiving abuse online.
A lot of the messages were from fake Facebook accounts, he added, but a message he said he received last Monday led him to close the business for a couple of days.
It read: “If your business is still open by the weekend, you will be dead.”
That came after a message on Saturday which said: “Your site has been hacked and will be shut down if you don’t pay up.”
He says he has also been called “paedophile” and “nonce”. The 38-year-old said it has been the worst experience of his life.
Mr Davies, from Llanelli, said the abuse was getting worse, adding: “I am depressed. If this business fails, it will be because of the trolls. It has been relentless.”
He said he knew the business would be very dependent on Facebook, and he realised from the beginning that trolls would be a problem.
He saw it as “part of life” but now feels his company, as well as himself, are attracting personal hate.
Mr Davies said, when reading messages like that, it made him feel like giving up – even if they came from fake accounts.
Describing it as a “horrible feeling”, Mr Davies added that he wasn’t scared the threats would be carried out.
However, he hasn’t been out in Swansea since opening the business, he added, because he was scared after having received messages saying if he did he would be beaten up.
“[On Monday], I closed the business, but then I thought ‘ You are doing what they want you to do’,” he said.
“I have reported it to the police before and they just say to keep monitoring it. You feel like you are wasting their time.
“I don’t ring them [the police] as there is nothing they can do. I just feel stupid complaining.
“Jealousy is a big thing and I think the business looks like it is more successful than it is. They genuinely hate me because of the fact I own a business.”
Mr Davies says he has had a lot of messages from local businesses asking him not to give up as they support what he does, and he has decided to reopen.
“We are just a small, local business trying hard to create a business,” he said.
“We are not a multi-million pound company. I am looking to get rid of the business because I can’t deal with it [the abuse] any more.”