Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbhl | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem with this is that packages are bursty -- your mail room is always bursting around Christmas time.

I saw one apartment complex this year that had a twist on the package robot concept -- there's an iPad at the door of the mail room, and you type in the code from your package, the iPad takes your photo and then unlocks the mail room door using a solenoid.

The UPS guy? Scans the barcodes on the packages, then wheels them in and drops them off on cheap metal shelves inside -- no need to pay an employee to manage the mail room 24/7. More residents/packages? Just buy a few more shelves. Resident wants to pick up a package as soon as Amazon buzzes them? No problem. Resident wants to pick up at 2am? Great.

The only problem is you have to trust your neighbors to not steal your packages.

View on HN

About the easiest system to defeat ever. Guess or obtain any working code, cover the iPad camera with your finger, and clean out the entire mailroom. You need to live in a very secure building with trustworthy neighbors for this to be viable.

Then again, we have no signature required, and regularly have packages sitting on our front porch for a day or so and haven't had anything go missing.

What is it with HN commenters living in these crime-ridden dens where everyone steals everyone's packages? Maybe it's a cultural thing but I've lived in apartment buildings in Germany with neighbors from all walks of life and unless a package has literally "$$$ EXPENSIVE GOODS THAT ARE EASY TO SELL $$$" written all over it, I wouldn't for a second worry about a neighbor stealing it.

Maybe your standards for "very secure" and "trustworthy" are extremely low.

I've lived in two large apartment buildings in New York.

The first one, if a package was dropped off in the lobby, the driver might as well deliver it directly into the garbage. I usually got things shipped to work, even if they were large and a hassle to get home.

The second one, our current one, all of the neighbors completely trust each other, and it's never been an issue. I ship most things home, now.

The difference is partially neighborhood (low-rent Brooklyn vs. Upper West Side), partially building size (200 units vs. 20), and partially who lives there (renters and month-to-monthers, vs. mostly condo owners.)

Yeah, I had something delivered the day after I went on vacation and it just sat in the entrance for a few weeks, then I took it upstairs when I got home. This is in Brooklyn FWIW.

I live in Manhattan and packages regularly get stolen from the hallway, behind the locked entrance doorway. Either we have thieves, or residents naively hold the door for thieves. Or bike deliverymen are thieves.

Another problem with these mail rooms might be privacy: every once in a while someone can see how many things you buy at a time and from what retailers you buy from.

USPS/FedEx/UPS dropping off your stuff at your porch has the exact same problem though.

Better than my apartment. Packages just get thrown on the floor in the lobby and it's a free for all

Reply on news.ycombinator.com