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Just to clarify (because the comments here are suggesting that a lockbox does what I'm asking for) - a lockbox does not address the issue for me. Lockboxes are

Just to clarify (because the comments here are suggesting that a lockbox does what I'm asking for) - a lockbox does not address the issue for me. Lockboxes are never all that local and they don't carry heavy things home for you. I literally want Amazon to go directly into my home and leave the goods in there. I want to order groceries on my phone and find them in my flat. Frozen items don't matter - I won't order them, it doesn't matter if they sit for a while. I want to leave a return package in my hallway and have it taken back by someone who collects it. I know that this sounds entitled but I also know that Amazon's already got the chops to support this and that if they did I would buy a lot more from them (like maybe £50/week more from them). Combined with Prime it would mean I would never want to order from any other merchant either.

angersock 13y ago
Physical security means nothing to you, does it?
- kozhevnikov 13y ago
  Physical security is a nice myth given Amazon itself sells bump keys and there is no shortage of rocks near by. Threat of prosecution (with CCTV as evidence) on the other hand might be the main deterrent for majority of typical households.
- petenixey 13y ago
  Leaving the house compromises my physical security. Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre.
  - DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
    To be fair, many of the people using those services only poorly understand the involved dangers, and many of the people pointing out it harms security, don't.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    "We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car" Well, no. We live in an age where a vanishingly small percentage of the population does these things.
    - garethadams 13y ago
      Based on Airbnb's trends[1], the only way the number can be "vanishingly small" is if an even greater number of people are deliberately stopping these behaviours. Where are you seeing that happening? [1]: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual
      - pjc50 13y ago
        That page says 300,000 listings, versus ~300m people in the US, makes 0.1%. That's not a large percentage; you could find a greater number of people who believe the moon landings are faked.
  - angersock 13y ago
    That's quite true, but for many of those we're starting to see the pushback, however gradual, on such invasive services. It's pretty funny to watch. As for the renting house/car bit...that's far from widespread (for better or worse).
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    >Leaving the house compromises my physical security I'll give you three guesses as to where I go when I do want physical security. Hint: it rhymes with "my own goddamn house". >Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. And as far as I'm concerned, I've reached my balancing point. Well, that may not be entirely true (the local lockbox thing sounds groovy), but giving some dude from Amazon a literal key to my home unbalances that. >The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. I don't know about all you hip SV folk, but I almost never use any of the things you've mentioned above, though I realize that specifics aren't really the point here. If you'd like to go ahead and give Amazon your home key, by all means, go ahead. I've opted out of Facebook (shadow profiles notwithstanding) and I'd likely opt out of this as well. If this were an opt-in sort of agreement (and I won't assume that it would be), then it's A-OK with me. And by the way, the "baulked at in theory" line doesn't really do anything for your particular argument. I could say that about anything, really, but it's not terribly convincing. >We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre. Perhaps you live in that world. I own neither a house nor a car, and if I did I'm fairly certain there would be minimal stranger activity within either of them.
rpercy 13y ago
What do you think of a service like http://keycafe.com/ http://keycafe.com/? Rather than picking up your package from a lockbox, the delivery person would grab your keys from what's essentially a lockbox.
- petenixey 13y ago
  that's basically exactly what I'm thinking as the solution, yes
eik3_de 13y ago
I would never let a random stranger enter my house when no one is at home. But DHL is trying an alternative in Germany at the moment: it's a box you buy from DHL and install on your property. DHL has a key so they can drop parcels in there and they will take returns with them. They send an SMS when they open it. You can even share a box with your neighbours. Of course the box has a limited size but for me that size would cover 95% of the parcels I receive. See http://www.paketda.de/dhl/paketkasten.php http://www.paketda.de/dhl/paketkasten.php (german)
michaelt 13y ago
Presumably the worry is fairly simple: You get a delivery. We agree our driver was in your house alone and unmonitored. You claim £50 in cash has gone missing. Our driver claims they didn't take it. Do we trust our drivers so much we tell you, the customer, that you must be lying? Do we trust our customers so much we fire (or caution) the drivers with no physical evidence? Do we fit all our drivers with wide-angle all-around body cameras? Will drivers object to that, like some developers (myself included) object to using screen capture software? What if for any reason the camera wasn't functioning? Do we fit cameras in customers' homes? I can tell you for sure that in an operation as large as Amazon there is some fraud by customers and some fraud by drivers.
philwelch 13y ago
I live in an apartment building. UPS delivers my Amazon orders to the office and the office delivers them to my apartment. It's nice.
- 5555624 13y ago
  Where? In The US? I also live in apartment building and some UPS drivers will try and deliver to the apartments and if there is no one home, they deliver to the office; while other UPS drivers just skip it and deliver everything straight to the office. The office never delivers to the apartments, we have to go and pick them up. It's in the lease that they cannot enter to deliver a package. (Other than an emergency, they have to give advance notice and it does not apply to packages.) It's been the same in three different apartment buildings in Virginia, over the last 25 years.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    Seattle.

angersock 13y ago

Physical security means nothing to you, does it?

kozhevnikov 13y ago
Physical security is a nice myth given Amazon itself sells bump keys and there is no shortage of rocks near by. Threat of prosecution (with CCTV as evidence) on the other hand might be the main deterrent for majority of typical households.
petenixey 13y ago
Leaving the house compromises my physical security. Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre.
- DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
  To be fair, many of the people using those services only poorly understand the involved dangers, and many of the people pointing out it harms security, don't.
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  "We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car" Well, no. We live in an age where a vanishingly small percentage of the population does these things.
  - garethadams 13y ago
    Based on Airbnb's trends[1], the only way the number can be "vanishingly small" is if an even greater number of people are deliberately stopping these behaviours. Where are you seeing that happening? [1]: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual
    - pjc50 13y ago
      That page says 300,000 listings, versus ~300m people in the US, makes 0.1%. That's not a large percentage; you could find a greater number of people who believe the moon landings are faked.
- angersock 13y ago
  That's quite true, but for many of those we're starting to see the pushback, however gradual, on such invasive services. It's pretty funny to watch. As for the renting house/car bit...that's far from widespread (for better or worse).
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  >Leaving the house compromises my physical security I'll give you three guesses as to where I go when I do want physical security. Hint: it rhymes with "my own goddamn house". >Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. And as far as I'm concerned, I've reached my balancing point. Well, that may not be entirely true (the local lockbox thing sounds groovy), but giving some dude from Amazon a literal key to my home unbalances that. >The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. I don't know about all you hip SV folk, but I almost never use any of the things you've mentioned above, though I realize that specifics aren't really the point here. If you'd like to go ahead and give Amazon your home key, by all means, go ahead. I've opted out of Facebook (shadow profiles notwithstanding) and I'd likely opt out of this as well. If this were an opt-in sort of agreement (and I won't assume that it would be), then it's A-OK with me. And by the way, the "baulked at in theory" line doesn't really do anything for your particular argument. I could say that about anything, really, but it's not terribly convincing. >We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre. Perhaps you live in that world. I own neither a house nor a car, and if I did I'm fairly certain there would be minimal stranger activity within either of them.

rpercy 13y ago

What do you think of a service like http://keycafe.com/ http://keycafe.com/? Rather than picking up your package from a lockbox, the delivery person would grab your keys from what's essentially a lockbox.

petenixey 13y ago
that's basically exactly what I'm thinking as the solution, yes

eik3_de 13y ago

I would never let a random stranger enter my house when no one is at home. But DHL is trying an alternative in Germany at the moment: it's a box you buy from DHL and install on your property. DHL has a key so they can drop parcels in there and they will take returns with them. They send an SMS when they open it. You can even share a box with your neighbours. Of course the box has a limited size but for me that size would cover 95% of the parcels I receive. See http://www.paketda.de/dhl/paketkasten.php http://www.paketda.de/dhl/paketkasten.php (german)

michaelt 13y ago

Presumably the worry is fairly simple: You get a delivery. We agree our driver was in your house alone and unmonitored. You claim £50 in cash has gone missing. Our driver claims they didn't take it. Do we trust our drivers so much we tell you, the customer, that you must be lying? Do we trust our customers so much we fire (or caution) the drivers with no physical evidence? Do we fit all our drivers with wide-angle all-around body cameras? Will drivers object to that, like some developers (myself included) object to using screen capture software? What if for any reason the camera wasn't functioning? Do we fit cameras in customers' homes? I can tell you for sure that in an operation as large as Amazon there is some fraud by customers and some fraud by drivers.

philwelch 13y ago

I live in an apartment building. UPS delivers my Amazon orders to the office and the office delivers them to my apartment. It's nice.

5555624 13y ago
Where? In The US? I also live in apartment building and some UPS drivers will try and deliver to the apartments and if there is no one home, they deliver to the office; while other UPS drivers just skip it and deliver everything straight to the office. The office never delivers to the apartments, we have to go and pick them up. It's in the lease that they cannot enter to deliver a package. (Other than an emergency, they have to give advance notice and it does not apply to packages.) It's been the same in three different apartment buildings in Virginia, over the last 25 years.
- philwelch 13y ago
  Seattle.