Can Consumers Fight Package Thieves With Technology? (geekwire.com)

Every year more than 10 million packages are stolen off doorsteps, according to a study by August Home Inc. -- a company which sells a "smart" door lock that's controlled by your cellphone so you can remotely let a delivery person into your house. But that's just one of the weird ways consumers are using technology to try to fight package thieves. An anonymous reader reports: Some online shopping sites will now also text you when one of their packages gets left on your doorstep, according to GeekWire, which reports that for a thousand bucks you can also just buy a lockable iBin parcel-delivery box. But there's also a startup selling an odd new product called Package Guard, "a Frisbee sized, wi-fi-enabled device that alerts a user when a package has been delivered and set on top of it. Package Guard sets off a loud alarm if anyone unauthorized tries to remove the package."

GeekWire details the frustration of one Seattle police detective. "Bach knows the crimes are happening, he knows it all spikes during the holiday season and he knows that the few thieves who are caught are likely to see little if any jail time." (Though Bach admits "We do a wide variety of undercover stings," including a recent operation involving mobile surveillance with a "major delivery company.") One Seattle man even attempted to stop thieves by installing a Ring smart doorbell to film activity on his doorstep, only to discover that this only enabled him to watch helplessly as a thief opened his package, and then successfully stole all of its contents.
Though he yelled at the video "Bring my package back now!" that thief was never caught.

Comments

Re:The simplest solution would be

[mjwx]

to get a PO box, and have all packages shipped to you there. Its 100% secure, nobody but you can get your package. And USPS shipping is usually less expensive than other options.

The only problems are:

- many companies have exclusive contracts with shipping carriers that cannot deliver to PO boxes, and - many companies refuse to ship to PO boxes even if they do offer USPS shipping, possibly out of obsolete paranoia.

This. It is extremely uncommon for a delivery service to leave parcels on doorsteps in England and Australia because someone might pass it and thing "I'll have that".

In Australia if you cant have someone present for the delivery, you'll have to pick it up from a Distribution Centre or Post Office. In the UK they might leave it with a neighbour.

Smart door locks are not the solution as they just expose your home to burglary. In fact like the parent poster pointed out, a solution already exists. This kind of thing just screams "solution looking for a problem".

Do like them thar foreigners

[coofercat]

Easy: don't let distance retailers leave parcels on your doorstep!

Here in the UK, if a parcel is on your doorstep and gets stolen, it's still the retailers responsibility. Also, many large employers will let you receive parcels at your place of work, so they're received by a human into a secure building. Your neighbours can do the same thing for you if you have some you talk to (and are home when you're not). Larger apartment blocks have a conceirge. Most places I've ever worked at least have let me work at home for a day to receive deliveries. Amazon have 'Amazon Lockers' (as do a few others), and some other retailers have small shop fronts at stations and whatnot where you can 'click and collect'. I'm not sure if it died off due to disuse, but there used to be a chain called 'doddle' (funded by our rail companies of all things) that did collection and delivery services. Then my least favourite, but occasionally used option: saturday delivery. If all else fails, most couriers here will take the parcel back to their base (which is invariably a bit of a distance away) so you can pick it up from there.

Honestly, this isn't that hard.

USPS sucks at packages

[sjbe]

I'm a fan of the USPS.

Evidently you haven't had to deal with them as much as I have. USPS is clumsy and inefficient. Their workers don't work quickly and shipping anything through them is a pain in the ass. Shipping packages through USPS is generally more expensive for equivalent service to UPS or FedEx. USPS "tracking service" is generally utterly useless. It tells you that it's been shipped and that it's been delivered and nothing in between most of the time. USPS does a fine job with letters but they are the only ones allowed to handle those so it's not like there is any alternative unless you want to hire an expensive private courier.

They make sure the package gets in your hands.

Only if you pay them extra to do so, no different from UPS or FedEx. Ship something without requiring the recipient to sign for delivery and they will not take special measures to get it to you and only you.

If you're not home, they leave a ticket in your mailbox to pickup the package at the office, which is far less inconvenient then having a package stolen.

UPS and FedEx do the same thing provided you pay them to do so. Just like USPS. And speaking solely for myself, I find having to make a special trip to the post office to be a colossally bad use of my time. It's inconvenient and the postal workers at the counter take FOREVER to do anything. It's typically a half hour trip every time I go and sometimes worse. Furthermore you can have UPS or FedEx hold packages at their depot in exactly the same way if doing so makes sense.

And if it's small enough to fit in a mailbox, sure, someone might take it. But it's a federal offense.

"Might"? Theft from mailboxes happens all the time. It's illegal to steal a package even if it isn't in a mailbox so I'm not sure why you think thieves give a shit just because the post office is involved. I've had packages I've shipped stolen right off the back of the truck long before they even got to their destination both via UPS and via USPS.

Twenty years ago, I remember when a package that came by UPS or Fedex always had to be signed for and was never left on a doorstep.

Bullshit. I was shipping packages by the thousands (literally) twenty years ago and it was no different then than it is now. You can pay UPS and FedEx extra to require a signature to deliver the package or you can just tell them to drop it off and save the extra cash. Same with insuring the package. You pay them if you want the extra handling. Some areas they will not deliver to without a signature but that is not widely true and hasn't ever been true for all packages as far as I know.

Re:The simplest solution would be

[wbr1]

UPS stores have what are essentially PO Boxes but are not USPS. The mailing address is often an office number at the UPS store location, so 111 any street Ofc 321.

UPS and USPS will deliver there (not sure for fedex) and it can be used as a business address.

PO boxes

[sjbe]

to get a PO box, and have all packages shipped to you there.

UPS will not deliver to PO boxes and in fact they cannot by law. Neither can FedEx, DHL, etc. Only the United States Postal Service can deliver to PO boxes. Since most of my deliveries do not come via USPS a PO box is rather useless to me. You can get a similar sort of service through places like UPS stores and they will accept packages from other couriers. Not the post office though.

And USPS shipping is usually less expensive than other options.

Not for equivalent service it isn't. USPS is generally more expensive and less convenient if you are paying for a similar level of service. I ship lots of packages and you can save money on postage in some cases through USPS but you generally get what you pay for.

Re:Solved

[Jason Levine]

Exactly this. Especially if the person is home and the courier leaves the package outside without even trying to ring the doorbell. We've had expensive shipments sitting outside for hours because UPS drivers don't ring the doorbells. Both of our cars are in the driveway, our lights are on, and sounds are coming from our house, but they still toss the package down and walk off. We've called UPS and they said it's their policy for drivers to ring the doorbells, but the drivers don't seem to follow through.

FedEx seems better at this by us, but this might vary depending on your local drivers. They need to enforce this policy better. Yes, it will mean slightly longer times needed for delivery (since "ring doorbell and wait 30 seconds" is longer than "drop package and walk away"), but it's worth it if it reduces package theft.

Re: Solved

[slew]

One of the issues in the UK was (it seems to have improved in the last year) that delivery schedules were essentially impossible for mortal humans to meet, and there was no time to hand over the package, get a signature, etc. Given that the odd pension funding requirements have put UPS under strain and UPS might be understaffed and having similar issues.

You are making the common confusion between UPS (united parcel service, a private company) and USPS (united states postal service, a government charter company). USPS has your so-called "odd pension funding requirement", the private UPS/IBT offers a pretty standard pension for its employees. Neither pension issue seems to have a effect on staffing levels of these companies.

Although USPS pension "pre-funding" issues have made the news, most folks are unaware that the UPS also has a completely different pension issue. Current UPS workers in the US have their pensions handled by a UPS/IBT union-partnership company, however prior to 2008, UPS outsourced the management of pensions to CSP (aka central-states-pension fund). They eventually decided to take bail on that company, but only take current employees to the new plan and a pay several billions of dollars to CSP to fund the pensions of retired employees remaining on CSP.

Now the old pension management company CSP is becoming insolvent (because most of its clients are trucking companies that are going bankrupt and didn't pay up like UPS) and CSP is poised to slash benefits checks as part of a reorg plan sponsored by the US treasury. Note that this crisis doesn't UPS, or current workers at all, but is of course a kick in the butt for those UPS employees that retired before 2008. Unlike the coal pension fund, congress hasn't been pressured to bail out this pension fund. If the pension fund would go bankrupt and taken over by the the pension guarantee insurance, only a fraction of the pension payments are generally covered by insurance and this negotiation with US treasury is designed to hopefully avoid the BK/insurance option for pensioners.

FWIW, the USPS pension would likely not have this insolvency issue because they are "odd-ly" forced to pre-pay their pension obligations, and not pay-as-you-go as other pensions funds. The observer is left to decide if pre-funding liabilities is an "odd" requirement or not given the fact that many industries can face an eventual future where in their growth phase, multiple employees are supporting a single pensioner, but as they shrink into obsolescence a single employee is supporting multiple pensioners. This is a just microcosm of the future effect of automation and aging populations will have on many western economies.

When companies are "doing-well", it's always tempting to improve benefits for pensioners over the amounts actually supported by the contributions the pensioners and the company when the employees were working. The argument that companies are "doing-well" and "should-contribute-more" is always compelling (and this argument often made by unions when negotiating contracts), but of course we see that generally violates the laws of economics long term and we see the results of this lack of foresight. Ironically the people who allegedly are qualified to plan for the retirement contracts for the employees are ignoring any planning for the retirement of their industries.

Next up on the pension crisis... Calpers (the california public employee pension fund)