[relix]

Slightly offtopic tangent:

So by now we're all aware that these are already ubiquitous in Europe.

The question I have is why it took so long to reach the US? Why didn't the main shipping companies there like FedEx and UPS step up and use their existing infrastructure to build something like this, much more easily than a startup could do.

[RandallBrown]

Amazon has been doing this for a few years in the US.

Bufferbox is actually only in Canada.

It's not a service I need, and definitely not one I'd pay extra for. I live in an apartment. The apartment office signs for and stores my packages.

If I lived in a house, in an area where people would steal the package left on my doorstep, then I might use something like this. It would have to be really convenient though.

[aneth4]

Most apartments do not have someone to sign for packages and missed deliveries are a pain. It's definitely worth paying $3 to avoid them m

[jarek]

Or just get things delivered by a sane service that stores your packages at a neighbourhood postal office rather than a warehouse in a distant suburb :)

[aneth4]

That limits you to the United States Postal Service, since USPS does not accept packages from other carriers.

[jarek]

Is USPS not a sane service? Sorry to hear.

[nchlswu]

The problem that's being solved is that we have no control over which delivery service a retailer uses

[jarek]

Sure, that's one of the ways to solve the problem.

Most retailers are upfront regarding the delivery service used. You wouldn't shop at a brick and mortar retailer that's unreasonably far from you. Why shop at an online retailer that sends your packages unreasonably far?

[citricsquid]

If we assume it's intentional I would guess the problem is the majority of US places are either too population dense or not dense enough. There's a finite amount of parcels that can be stored by these sort of systems; if the city is too dense (and too many people opt to use the system) it will become a gamble on if there's a place for your parcel there and the value of this system is you don't need to organise your day around deliveries.

I suspect the reason BufferBox can work is because they're not a delivery company, so they have no obligation to try and fit it in to their current business model. Although then a pre-existing delivery company could have always gone with the BufferBox model... so, maybe it's just not that profitable in big places like the US?

[Nitramp]

These services are in part an answer to relatively high labour cost for low/semi-skilled work, in particular outside normal working hours.

That is, in European countries with strong labour laws and unions, it's relatively expensive to pay people to deliver packages when most people are at home (early evening hours). The obvious answer is something like the Packstation, replacing labour cost with machines.

The US has a much wider market for very low income jobs because the marginal cost are lower, thus US companies can make money with jobs like people guarding parking lots, something you hardly see in Northern Europe (the weather might play a role, though...).

So naturally, such solutions spring up earlier where the relative win is higher. Plus as others mentioned the denser/more urban life style.

That's not a clear win by the way, lots of relatively decent jobs for low skilled workers are lost to these machines. The machines are cheap, but it might still have been more efficient to pay slightly less to the delivery workers (and kept them in jobs).

[relix]

Very good points. Thanks for the insights!

[stevoski]

It works well in high-density cities, and where a large proportion of the workforce pass through major train stations every day.

In cities where people live mostly in suburbs, it is not quite so affordable to supply enough of these pack stations.

[kip_]

Cost of land rental/lease.