Utah neighborhood uses decoy packages on porch to discourage thieves

boing
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Protecting yourself from thieves in general probably helps to protect yourself from thieves in particular as they lose interest and find other things to do (hopefully something more and not less constructive).

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Am I misremembering some good ol’ days when the post office or courier services would drop off boxes to a live person, and if no one was there to receive it, they would leave a note telling you to pick it up at the office? I feel like sometime around 10-20 years ago, there should have been a flood of customers angrily telling them not to leave stuff to be stolen or just rained-on on our porches. Did I miss the wave of anger, or did they just ignore it because they preferred dropping off things quickly over providing a decent service?

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There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

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Oh, and this might not be entirely on topic, but my dad was tired of kids or whoever smashing our mailbox on a country road, so he poured cement in an old mailbox and posted it beside our real one. If someone was using the stereotypical method of driving past with a baseball bat, hitting a massive rock might have messed them up. We found evidence of the hinge being busted at some point after that, but never heard if anyone was injured in the attempt (which my dad would have considered success).

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What’s your address? I’ll send you a crate of water :smiling_imp:

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There must be legal issues here too. Certainly in the UK if a parcel was left to be stolen and the seller and courier refused to reimburse you or replace your order you could go straight to Visa or to your credit card provider for a charge back.

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If you have a porch it is. You only get a tag if they can’t put it somewhere by your door (like you have a locked gate).

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That brings up another point which is couriers or the post office selling insurance money. I love the USPS, but isn’t this the most bleeding obvious conflict of interest ever? Mightn’t they consider calling it “Protection money” instead of insurance? Bruno says it’d be a pity if something happened to your box marked fraGEElay. Maybe if you slip us a few more bucks, we’ll take extra special care of it.

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I didn’t think my answer was all that strident, but I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.

Undoubtedly there are LDS families in that community and that’s an element of the social fabric.

There used to be a somewhat sharp divide between LDS households and those outside the faith, as @albill has pointed to at times.

That divide has largely vanished in the past 20 years. Our (heavily-LDS) neighborhood puts on an annual block party with no religious subtext whatsoever.

I was simply countering the idea that “those wacky Mormons” have much to do with it at all. I don’t dispute that they’re wacky. :smile:

Sorry again, and thanks for calling me on it so I could explain myself.

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My dad, who had been a welder and done construction, showed up in the 80s, thinking of moving to SLC since I was there. He got asked at the Union Hall what ward he was in. When he confessed to not being a member of the Church, they confessed that there would be no work for him available.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

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Ah, religious people and their lovely confessions. Always confessing.

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I’m an atheist, and probably shouldn’t be playing tone police, but are you adding anything to the conversation other than snark?

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Ummm … you got me. No. I’m sorry.

My mother was a devout, if non-observant, catholic. My father is a deep atheist with a baptist background who “thanks god” and “blesses you” all the time.

I kind of lost patience. BB is used to me, and this.

I get packages delivered under my motorcycle cover. Seems to work. I’ve never ordered a hippo-sized thing though.

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Let no cat turn go unpunished.

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Thanks for explaining! I did not realize how much community dilution there has been in Utah in recent years.

I will say that in my social circle, “oh those wacky Xs” is understood to be good-natured and fun, not a negative expression at all. I did not mean to suggest that there was something “off” about Mormons as a group. Kind of the opposite, if you know what I mean: if only more communities still thought in terms of everyone being decent at their core.

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