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Comment by clvcooke | Hacker News Reader

Looks like Amazon picked up the buffer box [1] idea. Such a shame Google bought them and shut them down, it had such potential.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BufferBox

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DHL has been operating Packstationen in Germany since 2001: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation

>There are 3,000 Packstation machines in Germany[1] and 90 percent of the people living in Germany were within ten minutes of a DHL Packstation.[2]

There are also Paketboxen, which are smaller installations for residential areas. The whole system works pretty well for me. The one big downside is, that it only works with DHL/Deutsche Post parcel. They are the dominant player here, but sometimes delivery by them is not available.

Can confirm, Packstations are awesome and I am still surprised that they haven't catched on the US and other parts of the world.

Yes! DHL is notoriously understaffed or incompetent in my Berlin neighbourhood. When i order packages to my apartment, often the guy will not even enter the building. He will drop off the package at some random neighbour 1 block away or the next Post office which as well is way too small and understaffed and i will recieve the notification card 2-3 days later (Email is fine though). Going to the post office, waiting in queue for 20-30 min is pretty normal. Since i am using Packstationen this problem has largely gone away and works perfectly for 95% of my deliveries.

Ah, another Berlin DHL sufferer. Either they don't even ring the bell, or drop it off at some neighbour that isn't there, or at a shop that closes at 4pm. Packstation has been a god's end, next to my supermarket anyway, 24/7 usable and having the doors plop open makes it feel like a Christmas calendar.

I thought BufferBox was a copy of Amazon Locker [1]?

  [1]: https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_366591722_2?_encoding=UTF8&node=6442600011

Seems like they were launched around similar times (both came out in 2011) so that a definite possibility. However from what I know about Waterloo's design projects (as this was a final year design project) this project was most likely started in 2010, so technically amazon's locker came out later. Although who knows who copies who when things get released so close to each other.

I would imagine that Amazon began working on their solution for some time before its release as well. Not that it matters to me who beat who but just to point out that they still likely started around the same time.

So ... I wonder how this is going to play into Amazon's drone delivery tech.

I did some digging in the /r/uwaterloo subreddit and it turns out that some customers were getting packages at no cost. Perhaps it wasn't financially viable.

I used it a bunch of times and having it on campus was pretty great. It was way safer than having the packages left randomly at the front of your residence. So as far as a "solved problem" is concerned, this definitely wasn't solved in any shape or form at Waterloo until BufferBox arrived.

Looks more like Amazon Locker to me.

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