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This is a good start. I have a registered code, I can update it whenever I move house, online ordering becomes easier, great. As people have indicated in threa

This is a good start. I have a registered code, I can update it whenever I move house, online ordering becomes easier, great. As people have indicated in thread already, the current implementation is easy: a website frontend just needs to be able to resolve it to the physical address. I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait, I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location. Going further, I might want to specify my home address as the default, but for items under 2kg delivered 8am to 5pm on weekdays, please deliver to my place of business. If I'm in hospital for a prolonged stay, I may want to redirect to a friend or family member. I actually expect some of the rapid delivery networks to get a bit more like this - I predicted with friends about 5 years ago at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site. Imagine if there was dynamic routing so that the parcel just "finds me" if I'm at work, or a bar after work... obviously I might want choices and options and so on, but I think the idea of parcels just going to where you sleep, whether you are there or not, is going to look quaint in 30 years time. [edit: there's also a nice bit of privacy going on here the later the lookup happens - if nobody at the e-commerce site knows where I actually live, that information can't be leaked]

luis_cho 1y ago
For me the privacy part of site not knowing we’re I live would be great. I could also black list entities from delivering spam.
- hbarka 1y ago
  My mailbox is full of junk mail and it’s hard to make them stop. It’s not even addressed to me, just the mailbox location. The design pattern to “unsubscribe” or block the junk sender is also useless. Surely there must be a strong political lobby in the US who don’t want to prevent junk mail. It’s so wasteful and ridiculous (literally tons of paper) and I’ve resigned to this fact of life in my country.
  - powvans 1y ago
    Marketing mail is a significant (maybe 25%) portion of the USPS revenue and very profitable. They have a strong disincentive to reduce the stream of junk mail going to your home.
- saati 1y ago
  What stops them from sending the spam to the same code?
SwtCyber 1y ago
Not having your address passed around 3rd-party sellers is a win on its own
- chgs 1y ago
  But they could look up your physical address and store and sell that easily as storing and selling your delivery address now.
  - lmm 1y ago
    The third-party seller never gets your address. They hand the package over to the delivery company with a code, the delivery company is the only one who knows what that code means. Japanese delivery companies already offer this service, since a lot of people don't like to publish their address.
- dooglius 1y ago
  This seems worse for that though, now they can track you better when you move and correlate with your identity better.
BlueTemplar 1y ago
> I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait, I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location. Around here the Post already knows how to do this (I assume it's similar elsewhere), it's also used for government-related matters. But I guess other carriers do not. I expect the overall results to be negative soon enough though : consider the issues USians have to endure with how (ab)used is their Social Security Number.
- eloisant 1y ago
  It's funny how you have a Social Security Number used for everything except provide you with actual social security.
miki123211 1y ago
Poland adopted parcel lockers on a massive scale, and they mostly solve that problem. It's such a good idea; I'm really surprised other countries haven't followed suit. They're absolutely everywhere. Your tiny village might not have a grocery store, a school or an ATM, but it probably has a locker. Where my parents live (a village of ~2000 people), they have three. The vast majority of people have at least one in walking distance. Before they became so popular, we used to do sign-on-delivery, leaving mail on your doorstep didn't become a thing here until covid. This made mail much harder to steal, but required you either to have somebody who would stay home all day, or to hunt down which neighbor got your package for you.
- guerby 1y ago
  Yes I agree with you, I don't understand why parcel lockers are not completely replacing delivery. I saw on youtube that China has "open stores" where you go pick on shelf your parcel, all controlled via camera and face recognition. In my country France the number of parcel lockers is going up but there's often sellers who don't propose them, or have some restrictions.
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    Things like that are only viable in high trust homogenous societies. Sadly a most of the western countries don't have that any more
- ChadNauseam 1y ago
  The amazon lockers work fairly well (and I often use them when traveling to avoid the headache of trying to ship something to a hotel.) But I have to say, I don't really understand why you feel they're game changing. You mention that parcel lockers "mostly solve that problem", but I don't really see how they solve any problems in the GP comment. For example, I don't see how they solve the problem of "I want to order something that will arrive in 6 months but I might move between now and then". (won't your package just go to a locker that's possibly very far away from you now?) It feels to me like the main problem lockers solve is preventing mail theft.
pjc50 1y ago
> at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes I'm reminded of the Taipei refuse trucks that play Fur Elise to remind you that it's the five-minute window in which you can put your bins in the street. I'm not very optimistic about delivery improving, because it's a three-sided market. You don't get to choose which courier the sender uses, but you're really their customer.
thesuitonym 1y ago
> You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site. That sounds terrible from just about every perspective. What about people who work during that 30 minutes? Or who have mobility concerns? What about a parent who's young child just fell asleep? Should they all have to go to the pickup site? And let's not kid ourselves, it's not going to be nearby. Especially if you live in a rural area. And how do you open the locker when you get there? Do you need another app that tracks your every movement? No thank you, please just leave the package at my door.
- hx8 1y ago
  > No thank you, please just leave the package at my door. With where I live now, yes. I've had a previous address with about a 15% package-theft rate within the first 2 hours of package delivery. In this situation I started to use lockers instead of straight to home. I think this type of delivery system (mobile lockers to stationary lockers) would be a hit in areas with high levels of package theft.
  - lokar 1y ago
    Or the police could deal with package theft.
- r00f 1y ago
  I am not sure about your particular area, but all those concerns have been solved for me. If I get package in my local mailbox (which is always nearby), I get a key to the delivery box dropped into my mail box. If the package doesnt fit there, I get message like "box 5 code 123456" if it is at self pickup site, or I go to the post office - which are both 5 minutes drive, but for box of such size I would need to drive even to my local mailbox. I will prefer any of those options over my package having to sit in the rain or on the snow.
  - thesuitonym 1y ago
    I'm familiar with apartments and trailer parks, and from experience I can tell you it's a worse system than just delivering door to door.
sojsurf 1y ago
> I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait, I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location. The downside for carriers is that costs are unpredictable. Will they be shipping it a few miles or to the other side of the country? The downside for the person ordering is that there is a race condition that makes it difficult for you to know where the thing will get delivered to. Perhaps you changed your location two days ago, and you are expecting a piece of furniture sometime soon. Did the furniture delivery process kick off before or after you changed your address?
tester756 1y ago
>I actually expect some of the rapid delivery networks to get a bit more like this - I predicted with friends about 5 years ago at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site. Imagine if there was dynamic routing so that the parcel just "finds me" if I'm at work, or a bar after work... obviously I might want choices and options and so on, but I think the idea of parcels just going to where you sleep, whether you are there or not, is going to look quaint in 30 years time. Inpost - logistics startup in Poland managed to put lockers everywhere and you just receive sms when the parcel is there and you have 48h to pick it up You can go whenever you want - simple and effective as hell They disrupted delivery industry

luis_cho 1y ago

For me the privacy part of site not knowing we’re I live would be great. I could also black list entities from delivering spam.

hbarka 1y ago
My mailbox is full of junk mail and it’s hard to make them stop. It’s not even addressed to me, just the mailbox location. The design pattern to “unsubscribe” or block the junk sender is also useless. Surely there must be a strong political lobby in the US who don’t want to prevent junk mail. It’s so wasteful and ridiculous (literally tons of paper) and I’ve resigned to this fact of life in my country.
- powvans 1y ago
  Marketing mail is a significant (maybe 25%) portion of the USPS revenue and very profitable. They have a strong disincentive to reduce the stream of junk mail going to your home.
saati 1y ago
What stops them from sending the spam to the same code?

SwtCyber 1y ago

Not having your address passed around 3rd-party sellers is a win on its own

chgs 1y ago
But they could look up your physical address and store and sell that easily as storing and selling your delivery address now.
- lmm 1y ago
  The third-party seller never gets your address. They hand the package over to the delivery company with a code, the delivery company is the only one who knows what that code means. Japanese delivery companies already offer this service, since a lot of people don't like to publish their address.
dooglius 1y ago
This seems worse for that though, now they can track you better when you move and correlate with your identity better.

BlueTemplar 1y ago

> I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait, I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location. Around here the Post already knows how to do this (I assume it's similar elsewhere), it's also used for government-related matters. But I guess other carriers do not. I expect the overall results to be negative soon enough though : consider the issues USians have to endure with how (ab)used is their Social Security Number.

eloisant 1y ago
It's funny how you have a Social Security Number used for everything except provide you with actual social security.

miki123211 1y ago

Poland adopted parcel lockers on a massive scale, and they mostly solve that problem. It's such a good idea; I'm really surprised other countries haven't followed suit. They're absolutely everywhere. Your tiny village might not have a grocery store, a school or an ATM, but it probably has a locker. Where my parents live (a village of ~2000 people), they have three. The vast majority of people have at least one in walking distance. Before they became so popular, we used to do sign-on-delivery, leaving mail on your doorstep didn't become a thing here until covid. This made mail much harder to steal, but required you either to have somebody who would stay home all day, or to hunt down which neighbor got your package for you.

guerby 1y ago
Yes I agree with you, I don't understand why parcel lockers are not completely replacing delivery. I saw on youtube that China has "open stores" where you go pick on shelf your parcel, all controlled via camera and face recognition. In my country France the number of parcel lockers is going up but there's often sellers who don't propose them, or have some restrictions.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  Things like that are only viable in high trust homogenous societies. Sadly a most of the western countries don't have that any more
ChadNauseam 1y ago
The amazon lockers work fairly well (and I often use them when traveling to avoid the headache of trying to ship something to a hotel.) But I have to say, I don't really understand why you feel they're game changing. You mention that parcel lockers "mostly solve that problem", but I don't really see how they solve any problems in the GP comment. For example, I don't see how they solve the problem of "I want to order something that will arrive in 6 months but I might move between now and then". (won't your package just go to a locker that's possibly very far away from you now?) It feels to me like the main problem lockers solve is preventing mail theft.

pjc50 1y ago

> at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes I'm reminded of the Taipei refuse trucks that play Fur Elise to remind you that it's the five-minute window in which you can put your bins in the street. I'm not very optimistic about delivery improving, because it's a three-sided market. You don't get to choose which courier the sender uses, but you're really their customer.

thesuitonym 1y ago

> You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site. That sounds terrible from just about every perspective. What about people who work during that 30 minutes? Or who have mobility concerns? What about a parent who's young child just fell asleep? Should they all have to go to the pickup site? And let's not kid ourselves, it's not going to be nearby. Especially if you live in a rural area. And how do you open the locker when you get there? Do you need another app that tracks your every movement? No thank you, please just leave the package at my door.

hx8 1y ago
> No thank you, please just leave the package at my door. With where I live now, yes. I've had a previous address with about a 15% package-theft rate within the first 2 hours of package delivery. In this situation I started to use lockers instead of straight to home. I think this type of delivery system (mobile lockers to stationary lockers) would be a hit in areas with high levels of package theft.
- lokar 1y ago
  Or the police could deal with package theft.
r00f 1y ago
I am not sure about your particular area, but all those concerns have been solved for me. If I get package in my local mailbox (which is always nearby), I get a key to the delivery box dropped into my mail box. If the package doesnt fit there, I get message like "box 5 code 123456" if it is at self pickup site, or I go to the post office - which are both 5 minutes drive, but for box of such size I would need to drive even to my local mailbox. I will prefer any of those options over my package having to sit in the rain or on the snow.
- thesuitonym 1y ago
  I'm familiar with apartments and trailer parks, and from experience I can tell you it's a worse system than just delivering door to door.

sojsurf 1y ago

> I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait, I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location. The downside for carriers is that costs are unpredictable. Will they be shipping it a few miles or to the other side of the country? The downside for the person ordering is that there is a race condition that makes it difficult for you to know where the thing will get delivered to. Perhaps you changed your location two days ago, and you are expecting a piece of furniture sometime soon. Did the furniture delivery process kick off before or after you changed your address?

tester756 1y ago

>I actually expect some of the rapid delivery networks to get a bit more like this - I predicted with friends about 5 years ago at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else in the street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site. Imagine if there was dynamic routing so that the parcel just "finds me" if I'm at work, or a bar after work... obviously I might want choices and options and so on, but I think the idea of parcels just going to where you sleep, whether you are there or not, is going to look quaint in 30 years time. Inpost - logistics startup in Poland managed to put lockers everywhere and you just receive sms when the parcel is there and you have 48h to pick it up You can go whenever you want - simple and effective as hell They disrupted delivery industry