Great for houses that you own, doesn't work as well for apartment/condo if you don't get the building itself to just put package lockers in the lobby.
My dream configuration is a guardhouse/lobby or something with package bays and a bathroom/drinks fridge/tv/wifi for delivery personnel. I'd love to give my UPS/FedEx/USPS/Uber/Lyft/etc. drivers a great place on their route to use the bathroom, take a break, potentially eat their lunch, etc. when delivering packages to me. Doing this as a business is easy, but it would probably work for a gated community or apartment complex, too.
I'm only half kidding.. the amount of insulated packaging waste from when I had my Gobble (one of those cook-it-yourself food deliveries) subscription was one reason why I cancelled it.
Everyone except USPS then. I've been kicking around the idea myself. Something like a package box with a slide down ramp, so you can't pull anything out when delivering something new.
A simple plastic/metal box with a lid and without a lock will give you 90% of the benefit - a would-be thief, unable to see whether you have any packages form the street, will move on to the next house that does have visible packages laying at the door.
I'm pretty sure they do. I remember seeing something about community mailboxes Amazon was offering for this exact reason to apartment buildings and such.
That's sort of what DHL is doing in Germany: Instead of to an address, you can have packages delivered to a mailbox-as-a-service which is called "Packstation". Your package is stored in a drawer that you open with an ID card issued by DHL plus a TAN you get via SMS.
If Amazon provided the delivery box it could easily reduce costs. The delivery box could automatically open when the delivery person approached it, it could have transceivers to improve robotic delivery in the future, and it could be size-matched to what Amazon typically needs to deliver and order.
My dream configuration is a guardhouse/lobby or something with package bays and a bathroom/drinks fridge/tv/wifi for delivery personnel. I'd love to give my UPS/FedEx/USPS/Uber/Lyft/etc. drivers a great place on their route to use the bathroom, take a break, potentially eat their lunch, etc. when delivering packages to me. Doing this as a business is easy, but it would probably work for a gated community or apartment complex, too.