You seem to live in a more humane place than most U.S. locales. Delivery services here tend to just shrug their shoulders and yawn when we tell them that we didn’t receive a package.
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It may well cost more than most online shopping, and require someone from Global Trade Compliance to actually hammer out the shipping details with the shipper(you do have a company account, right?); but it is possible to get delivery services to care.
In our case, for those sorts of shipments(perishable, often hazardous per DoT or IATA), they very much collect signatures, keep them on file where we can easily request them for at least a year(handy if there is any question about exactly who signed for the package that the recipient now claims never arrived); and don’t blithely ignore shipping instructions.
I don’t want to know what that costs, though. For standard service they’ve responded to the fact that people are really price sensitive by just piling on the work until the drivers (apparently often ‘independent contractors’) don’t have time to actually do the job properly.
But then you tell the sender you didn’t receive the package, demand your money back, and the sender will stop using that crappy delivery service, right?
Losing people’s packages shouldn’t be a viable business model.
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Wait does this actually happen? Pranksters come by and close the lockbox door so delivery people can’t use it?
(This does raise another question, what about multiple deliveries on the same day? First in wins, everyone else is locked out for the rest of the day?)
Yeah but Amazon cares and will fix it, even if the delivery service can’t or won’t… so that’s another angle.
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It hasn’t reached critical levels since most people are honest and theft and serious mishandling are still inconsistent. If you are a seller the number of packages you end up refunding aren’t worse than typical shoplifting and breakage for selling in person.
I’m a small time Etsy seller and I have to refund less than 1% of my sales and there is only one where I really suspect the person was lying (about a $10 item). I insure bigger stuff (in US) and have never had to collect on postal insurance. I have to take more of a risk with out of the country orders but haven’t had trouble there either.
Personally I’ve never had a package stolen but I also had far fewer deliveries when I lived in higher crime neighborhoods b/c I was broke. I grew up in a neighborhood where unattended bikes could disappear in minutes but online shopping wasn’t really a thing yet.
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Here is a list of helpful DIY solutions (https://www.thepackageguard.com/prevention-solution-compare-package-theft/) for package theft without having to rely on the delivery companies.
We also have some resources to help you file a claim with your carrier if you did have a package going missing in our “Package Theft” dropdown bar.
What do you normally do for non prime deliveries?
Package Guard, iBin and other smart lock boxes can provide you with real time notifications and alerts when your package is on your front porch.
There are also some cool services that you can use to have packages delivered to neighbors who will receive and hold them like Doorman, Vyllage, and eNeighbor.
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IIRC, the original Elephantrunk had a system wherein the delivery guy opened the door, put the parcel in, and closed the door, which dropped said parcel into a lower compartment that was not accessible from the upper compartment. that accommodated multiple deliveries, at least as long as you didn’t run out of space in it. When you arrived home, you unlocked the lower compartment and retrieved your stuff.
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This is what I was originally thinking of:
It’s not cheap, but you get what you pay for.
That’s a good design! Like a book drop.
That’s nice. The next box is about 2 km away, nothing I care to waste my mandatory 45 minute break on. So I consider the service as unreliable during peak times. All the people around me who wax about it are car users, who don’t even register that they drove an additional four km it so to get to the other box.
Isn’t that something the delivery company dies already? I was literally just getting a near-real-time notification that Hermes dropped off their Amazon package at my place. Those usually don’t take longer than 15 minutes to progress from driver to me. Also, all log when they put the stuff in their cars, so I already have a good estimate on when they will arrive. Granted, that requires that I memorize when the various companies make their rounds.
Location, location, location.
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Heh. Ours an outdoor shelter for rabbits or similar critters. We bought it to make it into a shelter for a stray cat, so that it could survive the winter. Some styrofoam and plenty of hay.
Anyway, at some time the cat didn’t come anymore and I retrofitted it a couple of months later. Screwing the small door (not shown) shut and installing the lock. Also a chain do the lid doesn’t open beyond 90°.
Yup. That’s why I enjoy our home made box, 50 meters from the street, small village with above-average earners and functional families. It’s not that there are no break ins, but the chances of random vandalism or opportunistic theft if virtually zero.
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