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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.
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.
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".
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
Not the seller, the courier. Leaving a package on a doorstep is no less negligent than leaving it on the side of the road and telling someone to go get it before it's stolen. This should be covered under existing law.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
- Various "locker" countries. Lockers at many locations, often post offices, petrol stations, 24-hour shops. After selecting a bank of lockers which is convenient (e.g. on your way home to/from work), the delivery driver gets the location and a code for sealing the locker ; the recipient gets a code for opening the locker ; the shop keeper/ station manager etc has nothing to do unless there's a dispute, but they get a rental fee. PROBLEM : multiple companies. NEAREST to me : 2 locations in my city of < 10000 people.
- At least one "warehouse chain" (no store as such, just a warehouse ; you select from the catalogue or online, pay, and the goods are brought to you at front-of-warehouse) leverage their existing delivery network for people to collect goods from their chosen store. PROBLEM : limited number of stores. NEAREST : six miles from me, but I'm often there anyway. Another one 10 miles away in a different direction..
- Locker by front door : bolt a weatherproof locker by your front door. Close it with a programmable combination lock. Set code on lock, send code to delivery company, lock locker, put paper seal on locker. When you get home, unlock locker, inspect goods. Reverse works for collecting returns. Change lock code for next delivery. PROBLEM : might be too small, might be ugly, these are your problems. NEAREST : I've made these temporarily - metal locker secured by chain through letter box.
But to be honest, the "card through the door and collect item from post office" generally works fine for me.
This is not a problem that really need sophisticated technology. Just a little of that rarest of commodities - common sense.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
In Denmark and Germany they have a foolproof system, the mailman or delivery guy doesn't actuallly have the package in his truck, all he has is a pad of notices all saying "You weren't at home, go get your package at the post office tomorrow!"
That gets REALLY awkward when you open the front door while the mailman is coming up towards it.
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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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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)