[lock-the-spock]

Somewhat off topic but it is quite stunning to me that American carriers just leave the package at the door. I lived in different European countries and in all of them the expectation is that the mailman (official mail, or any of the services like dhl, ups, etc) will ring the bell. If you don't answer they will ring the neighbour and then take it back and either try again another day or you can go to a pickup point. Instead the U.S. has an entire category of devices to avoid package theft when the solution lies in holding carriers to account. I don't want to open the garage for Amazon or Bol or any other delivery company...

[yborg]

What you describe is how it worked in the US maybe 10 years ago too. But Amazon's free delivery race to the bottom made the cost of reattempts to deliver eliminate any margin. It's cheaper for Amazon to replace stolen shipments for a few people than to make multiple attempts to do re-delivery for many people. And creating a problem in order to charge people to solve the problem you created is a basic monopolist playbook move.

[rootusrootus]

UPS used to do that. I hated it. If I'm not at home I have to wait another day to get my package, or drive across town to get it from the depot.

Just put it on the porch. Not everyone lives in an area with a package theft problem, let those folks work out their own solution but don't punish the rest of us.

[0xffff2]

Meanwhile, it is quite stunning to me that European carriers would intentionally mis-deliver (i.e. leave with a neighbor) packages rather than just leaving them on the porch! Over many years and many neighbors, I've had plenty who I would be happy to let receive my packages and plenty I would very much not. Likewise, I would be quite peeved as a permanent WFH-er to be the neighborhood final delivery guy.

There are plenty of places in the US where packages left on the porch aren't secure, but there are also plenty of places where it's completely fine and saves everyone time. I've never once had a package stolen off my porch anywhere from an apartment in the Bay Area to a house on 10 acres in rural Oregon. I really think that the places where package theft is rampant are the exception, not the rule.

[lock-the-spock]

Thanks, interesting insight. Here it's just a normal thing to do. Why not do my neighbour a favour? The mail carriers mostly are regulars (except for the new Amazon carriers) so if you refuse parcels they will also respect this and not bother you.

[lannisterstark]

I dont want my neighbors to have my package. Fuck that. I'd rather they leave it on my porch.

[fnordpiglet]

When I lived in NYC and like most didn’t own a car this was the way it worked (sans the neighbor, delivering a package to the wrong recipient is a big no no, and makes some huge assumptions about the neighbor, relationship to the neighbor, and sensitivity of the delivery). If you weren’t home you got a hang tag. They attempted redelivery a few times, held it for a while for pickup, then sent it back.

I worked, like most folks, and people are not generally home. The pickup location took two hours to get to via public transit. That’s a four hour round trip. There was one and only one pickup location in the entire NYC region for fedex.

It made life impossible. Amazon came along and decided to take responsibility for losses directly and instructed carriers to leave packages and not reattempt delivery or hold them. Customers vastly preferred this, carriers too as they saved tons of money. Amazon got a reputation for being much more convenient to order from. Their losses as a percentage were low compared to essentially owning mail order due to the convenience. When I had packages stolen they immediately shipped a replacement no questions asked.

Amazon Key is an attempt to mitigate theft but also a lot of folks just feel uncomfortable with packages on their front step. The idea of leaving you garage slightly open for deliveries isn’t a new one, but the Key product improves on that by only opening for the delivery person and recording their interactions to ensure they don’t do something they shouldn’t.

I used it briefly but I didn’t like it because I have a workshop in my garage and I just didn’t want people seeing what I’m working on. I wasn’t worried they would rob me per se, just didn’t like showing my work in progress to random strangers. If it opened the garage slightly to allow the package delivery I would have kept it but it opened 100%.

[lock-the-spock]

Interesting, it seems in the EU countries I lived in, a different solution emerged: the mail carriers cooperate with local corner shops (common in any EU city) and even supermarkets to serve as pick up points. In addition there are package lock boxes run by the mail carrier and distributed in central locations. I have never lived anywhere where I would have walked more than 10 minutes to the pickup, usually much less. The only issue I ever had was with a huge bulk parcel which I had to pick up at a depot, and a deouevry from china on which I had to pay duties. But that were 2 out of probably thousands of deliveries over the years.

On neighbours, the carriers usually let you choose if you want this to happen, but it's just a normal part of life to accept (and hand over) your neighbour's parcels. I have done so dozens of times and had it happen for me, even in rougher areas where I barely knew the neighbours. I guess levels of interpersonal trust might be higher in Europe than the U.S.?

[BHSPitMonkey]

This is how it used to work in the U.S., too, until the major carriers recently realized they can make that into a paid feature for the customer. Now you can't even request something to be held at the store or distribution center for pickup without a fee or subscription.

[boring_twenties]

Yikes, I would never in a million years use a shipping service that delivered my packages to my neighbor, nor one that required me to go to a pickup point. WTF is the point of that? If I wanted to go somewhere to pick up my stuff, I'd just buy it from a store instead of ordering it online!

[lock-the-spock]

Most mail carriers (the majority of deliveries are carried by a national (ex) monopoly let you choose what you want to happen to your package. And we have many corner shops in EU cities and towns, and the mail companies have installed dedicated lockers as well in central locations, so a pickup point is usually 5 minute walk away. On the neighbour - for me that's normal. I guess we generally trust our neighbours more? We also do not have the strange U.S. laws that you can keep anything that arrives at your door, so it is normal for anyone to receive (and then hand over) neighbour's parcels. Like a real community...

[boring_twenties]

Thanks for the long winded justification, but all of these are strictly worse than simply leaving my package at the doorstep. I'm 40 years old and in my entire life I have had exactly one package go missing after being delivered... that risk is not worth even considering "a 5 minute walk" to get every packages, nevermind having them delivered to random neighbors -- that's just beyond the pale, absolutely absurd.