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Comment by Batsu | Hacker News Reader

This.

I can't imagine why I'd want to give a package to a person I've never met who has no obligation to deliver the package to it's destination. If I didn't care too much about the item being shipped... I wouldn't be shipping it.

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If you could link this idea up with a social network you may be able to increase the trust level by searching within your social network, perhaps by extending that network by one or two degrees of separation. If everyone that you know and all of their friends entered their vacation plans into a database so that you could find someone that you have a chance of trusting who could deliver your package, you may be able to make it work. On the other hand, now people have a way of finding out who's going to be on vacation and when, that could be bad.

One way I intend to ensure trust is to have shippers use either Paypal or Amazon payments to accept shipment payments... By proxy, a shipper's identity will not be anonymous anymore since those services do require bank account information which is a thorough form of ID.

I suppose the payment is done after the package arrives...

Then the shipper could get ripped off.

Most of these concerns are the same as with any site that deals in blind transactions (ebay, used things on amazon, paypal in general), but these sites only require you to risk your time upfront where as in the case of this site the customer is risking something they already own with the hope of future payment. Essentially its like requiring people on ebay to send items before they receive payment.

The most basic way I can think of to deal with this imbalance is to have the shipper make a deposit up front to "insure" the item being ships. Upon arrival the shipper gets their deposit plus payment. There is probably a more elegant way to frame this so that the shipper does not feel like they are risking so much.

Can't you just turn it into a crime not to deliver?

The canonical way to do this (which I will call the "hitman protocol") is a percentage up front, and the remainder upon completion.

Given that the sums here are probably small, this probably doesn't fix the situation.

This was my reaction when I looked at airbnb. They seem to enjoy success. Any insight into why that trust model works? What makes it better than this?

The buyer isn't entrusting any property to the seller in the Airbnb situation. Putting down money through a buyer friendly system is one thing.. giving a PS3 to a basically unknown entity on top of that is something else.

Sorry, but I still don't get it. Surely giving person X access to your home carries more risk than just giving person X your PS3. Is your point that you have less legal recourse or is there something more practical I am missing?

Ah, but in that case the /seller/ is the only one with property on the line. Sellers in most markets are used to taking on risk (eBay and PayPal's policies are oriented around this pattern, for example) whereas buyers are not.

Thanks, that's what I was missing.

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