This is brilliant ! :)

[March Audio]

 

[Soniclife]

Nice festive touch as well.

How big a problem is this? We get things left at our front door often, but we are away from the road so not easily visible, nothings gone so far, but I don't see our house as very representative.

 

[DonH56]

Where I live, out of town a ways, it is less a problem but is a big problem in the city to the south and even in the small town near where I live. Generally a big problem across the USA. And there is little recourse; security cameras, if you have them, might help identify the thieves but most of them have learned to cover up, and even on the slight chance they are caught there is almost zero chance of getting your merchandise back. Some stores will refund and replace, many won't, and my friend went through hell trying to get a refund from his credit card company for a ~$1k USD package left on and stolen from his doorstep. Local police say to ship to someplace somebody is there to sign or have it held for pickup. UPS is very far from work or home, and many work places do not allow personal employee deliveries. Gnarly, vexing, problem. I hate it when the sleazeballs win.

 

[Cosmik]

Where I live, out of town a ways, it is less a problem but is a big problem in the city to the south and even in the small town near where I live. Generally a big problem across the USA. And there is little recourse; security cameras, if you have them, might help identify the thieves but most of them have learned to cover up, and even on the slight chance they are caught there is almost zero chance of getting your merchandise back. Some stores will refund and replace, many won't, and my friend went through hell trying to get a refund from his credit card company for a ~$1k USD package left on and stolen from his doorstep. Local police say to ship to someplace somebody is there to sign or have it held for pickup. UPS is very far from work or home, and many work places do not allow personal employee deliveries. Gnarly, vexing, problem. I hate it when the sleazeballs win.

Did I see an idea for a bolted-down secure box that only the delivery person has the code for? (Could be on their phone, for example). Seems like the obvious solution..?

 

[DonH56]

Been discussed as a solution but not implemented by major carriers yet. Amazon (I think) had a scheme to let the delivery people into your house or car, but then you're giving the delivery person access to your house. I'm not ready to do that yet and do not have the electronic locks it requires anyway. And of course thieves may simply try to steal the box, or break in, or hack the code, but anything that slows them down would help.

 

[Jorj]

I've had a few packages pirated from my doorstep. I live on a busy street with a lot of foot traffic. The real issue in my area is incompetent delivery drivers. FedEx is the worst, delivering to the wrong address at least 50% of the time, and when they get it right, they will often toss packages into the strangest places. It's like a game. Recently got a box from USPS via international customs that was completely empty and crushed flat. At least the shipping label made it!

The OP video is fun, and I've seen variations of this years ago. One guy was doing a proximity-based sensor that triggered a paint bomb if the box got far enough from the house, but those must have been taken down from the YouTube.

 

[Soniclife]

Did I see an idea for a bolted-down secure box that only the delivery person has the code for?

That seems like it should work.

We have a weird outside cupboard built into the house right next to our front door, it's perfect when the instruction for safe place makes it to the driver, who bothers to read it. It's not secure, just has a simple bolt. Out of sight will probably prevent most of this.

 

[mansr]

Here in the UK we have a very simple solution: don't leave parcels sitting outside. The delivery driver knocks on your door. If you don't answer, he leaves a card in your letterbox, so you can arrange a new delivery or pick it up from their depot. If can't be home during the day, the simplest option is usually to have stuff shipped to your workplace.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Here in the UK we have a very simple solution: don't leave parcels sitting outside. The delivery driver knocks on your door. If you don't answer, he leaves a card in your letterbox, so you can arrange a new delivery or pick it up from their depot. If can't be home during the day, the simplest option is usually to have stuff shipped to your workplace.

Same here in Germany, with the additional option of leaving the package with a neighbour. The system is good in theory, but often these companies fail to leave slips in the letterbox, or try to dump the whole apartment building’s packages with a neighbour on the ground floor, then turn around and take everything back to the depot if nobody downstairs answers the bell (on occasion, even if the intended recipient is sitting upstairs waiting for the delivery IME).

 

[DonH56]

The problem for many, or at least some, of us is that our workplaces will not accept private packages. They don't want their shipping department flooded with personal packages especially like now during the holidays. I have worked at several places in the past few decades and policies were mixed (smaller companies were often more lenient, natch). My current workplace allows packages so I have taken advantage of that a few times for big-ticket items. But they have their limits in the quantity they will tolerate...

I am fairly lucky in that the delivery drivers often get out to our place late in the day or early evening so sometimes I arrange to be home a little early. Varies with workload, though, can't do that right now.

I like the idea of a secured box with an electronic lock the delivery service could keep with my account. Which would no doubt get hacked at some point but at least I could change it frequently (or more likely when I think of it every other year or so).

My wife's boss had their home, and their neighbor's home, broken into whilst on an evening walk. They were gone about fifteen minutes in an upscale neighborhood. The thieves broke in the back door, grabbed what they could, and got out and away in a delivery van. The police said groups are hanging out watching neighborhoods and looking for people leaving so they can rush in quickly. They then brazenly move down the block and wait some more. The van was seen on several cameras in the area but the thieves were bundled up so no clear pictures. Apparently a lot of folk do not set alarms when leaving for a short walk (bad idea, natch).

 

[Dogen]

The lock box could use one-time codes for specific deliveries, generated when ordering and vanishing after delivery. Wouldn’t be too hard to set it up so it works with multiple delivery services.

BTW, things were regularly stolen from our porch. We ended up getting a mailbox service that will accept, sign for and securely hold all our packages. It’s quite inexpensive.

 

[tmtomh]

Did I see an idea for a bolted-down secure box that only the delivery person has the code for? (Could be on their phone, for example). Seems like the obvious solution..?

Yes, they have those (at least in the U.S.). My neighbor has one. In a dense city neighborhood with narrow sidewalks, the box can take up a bit too much of the pathway for pedestrians, but other than that it seems to be a good solution. The real challenge is finding a way to ensure that all the delivery people have the code. US Postal delivery people rotate on urban routes, and Amazon's own delivery service - a major source of theft because they're the main ones who leave packages exposed on doorsteps - has a constantly rotating cast of per-job delivery people who are just regular folks picking up delivery shifts.

I suppose if some consistent system can get created where the code can be printed on the mailing label of the package, that would solve the problem - no matter who the delivery person was, they could see the code on the label, and once the package was put inside the locked box, having the code on the label wouldn't be a security concern.

Here in the UK we have a very simple solution: don't leave parcels sitting outside. The delivery driver knocks on your door. If you don't answer, he leaves a card in your letterbox, so you can arrange a new delivery or pick it up from their depot. If can't be home during the day, the simplest option is usually to have stuff shipped to your workplace.

In the U.S., the US Postal Service tends to do just that, as does UPS. Fedex Ground/Home Delivery, however, routinely leaves the package exposed rather than a pickup/redelivery slip - and Amazon Logistics (really just a series of individual delivery people who do per-job contracted delivery for Amazon) doesn't even offer pickup slip/redelivery as an option. Ditto for DHL Global, which is a division of DHL that specializes in cut-rate residential ground delivery.

In addition, the major private delivery companies have consolidated (read: reduced) their hubs in recent years. They are compensating for the lack of hubs and the package-theft problem by designating "Access Points" like UPS Stores, mailbox stores, and just regular businesses where customers can have their packages delivered, for pickup later.

 

[Soniclife]

Work place deliverys are great, until you order something that is unexpectedly large and heavy.

I doubt the rules for this are at fault in many countries, it's the outsourcing to the lowest bidder, and delivery routes and estimates for drivers that make things impossible to achieve if the traffic is less than perfect. So the drivers soon learn to dump and run.

Where we live is a 4 house close, I've seen people drive in, turn around so they are pointing at the exit, then run up someone's drive and shove a note through the door then zoom out, presumably to save themselves a few mins on something that needs signing for. I expect being a delivery driver is a crap job because of the way it's managed, not so much the work.

 

[DonH56]

I have a friend who worked for "a major US shipping and delivery service". They were paid and graded heavily on how many stops they made. Financially they were way ahead to plop a note on the door vs. waiting to see if someone answered. And yes I agree that is a management problem.

 

[mansr]

Same here in Germany, with the additional option of leaving the package with a neighbour.

Right, we have that option here too. Somewhere, I saw a secure metal box with a one-way lid allowing anyone to place things in it without needing a key or code.

 

[stunta]

Neat idea but isn't this guy worried about retaliation?

 

[Wombat]

Neat idea but isn't this guy worried about retaliation?

He can say the package was intended for him.