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I'm living in Greece right now and I've been shopping online a bit more the past couple of months. I've been shopping online since 2006 and I guess at some point I forgot to notice how shit of an experience it is.

So in the past couple of months, I have RMA'd two items, returned one due to bad fulfillment, returned one more because I didn't like what I bought (and that got lost). Of all the items I ordered, one got lost or stolen, two more I had to pick up at the local PO which cost me a total of ~20USD in taxi fares (and several hours wasted waiting in line), one I had to pick up in the central depot which cost me 50USD in taxi fares just for that day (and again, several hours wasted).

Only one of those packages had free delivery because they all have to hop between the US, China, Denmark, Germany and who knows where else. (The only one I got free delivery on was a CODE keyboard, which costs $250 in Europe, vs. $130 in USA). So I'm actually paying for this ostensibly terrible service.

So I'm looking at the hub and I just think "Wow, that solves a lot of problems outside the US".

And it's US only.

Of course it is.

> And it's US only.

There are already competitors operating here in Canada doing this stuff fortunately. I believe Amazon acquired one of them which turned into this [nm, see edit]. That should hopefully pressure Amazon to expand and this will offer tons of free advertising for those smaller companies competing.

Edit: turns out it was Buffer Box and they were acquired by Google and (of course) shut down https://www.wikiwand.com/en/BufferBox

InPost is another one with boxes all over Europe. They recently shut down in my city though :/ (Toronto). But otherwise it looks pretty like they have extensive deployment: https://inpost24.com/

Germany has DHL Packstation: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Packstation

Also two startups: https://wefunder.com/swapbox and http://www.ucella.com/

The Packstation of DHL is great. What also DP/DHL did, is to make every little shop a micro-postoffice. Probably gave them some incentives, but it works great if you are not at home, you can be sure your package is at the store max 5 mins from you

Australia has Parcel Lockers run by the post office for free - they are pretty good https://auspost.com.au/parcels-mail/parcel-collection-delive...

But only for packages which are delivered through AusPost. Which if you buy stuff internationally, it mostly isn't.

Also, not in a ton of locations.

It's the same situation here in Lithuania - various companies have these lockers but it's hit or miss who an international package will be delivered by. Even from Amazon I've had packages delivered by DHL, UPS and regular mail.

The post office will give you a forwarding address (for regular mail) that will end up in the locker of your choosing, but you then have to pay €x/package, and the lockers are usually at post offices, so it's not really worth it.

IDK, the vast majority of my international purchases have been delivered by AusPost - it's actually domestic PC parts shops and eBay sellers that I have the most problems with as a lot of them choose to use companies like Fastway and don't make it clear on their websites who they ship with.

I dont think so, I've had everything delivered there and never had an issue. My only exception is if its something where they say no po box - then I havent tried.

I've had four Amazon packages delivered to Parcel Lockers in the last two months.

InPost is essentially useless in the UK, mind... there's essentially no retailers that support it, you can't have arbitrary packages from retailers posted to one, and I've literally never seen someone using my local InPost box to send packages. I'm assuming they're burning through investment money badly. To show how little people care about it: it doesn't even have an English-language wikipedia page.

If they could somehow have the postal service and couriers able to post things to InPost boxes, it'd be far more useful - but I suspect there's some really complicated contractual stuff that prevents that.

In the UK, PassMyParcel is good.

Your parcel get just delivered to your local NewsAgent, which in the UK generally has extensive opening times. Supported directly by Amazon and a bunch of retailer, but delivery companies use the same system (DPD, EPS).

Canada Post provides this service. My building has a parcel rack and they just put a numbered key in your mailbox when you have a parcel. No need for codes or phones.

For those who may not know, Canada's national postal service is the largest parcel carrier in Canada.

The public post office in Cyprus [0] has 3 of those machines (1 for each big city).

SMSes get sent to you as notification, and you have 3-4 days to pick it up. After that (and a second notification), it gets sent to your local post office and a delivery note is sent to your house.

No charges yet for the service, though they have been toying with the idea ever since it launched a few years ago. No charges for packages not getting delivered either.

[0] http://www.mcw.gov.cy/mcw/dps/dps.nsf/page25_en/page25_en?Op...

For the longest time, Buffer box had one location: inside the Google Waterloo office.

> It's only US

I think that in densely built European cities robo delivery is a much more promising technology. The first trials are already ongoing here [0]. Putting in the hubs may not make sense if the target audience doesn't want delivery vans in a few years time.

[0] https://www.starship.xyz

I literally just came back from grabbing a package at an Amazon locker in Italy (this exact concept, except it's been around for a couple of months now). It was convenient and beats the really unreliable parcel services here.

Amazon have a similar service, but installed in public spaces, called Amazon Locker. They have it at least here in Spain [0].

[0]: https://www.amazon.es/locker

In Singapore the national postal service provides this service when you can ask the parcels to be delivered to automated box and you can collect later don't know if it works with fedex or other postal service who have their own delivery guys

>It serves a real beneficial purpose for those of us who have missed packages while at work and had to drive 20min in terrible traffic to the nearest FedEx/UPS/etc retail outlet

There is a low-tech solution for this already..you have normal package lockers near the mailroom which have keys. Your package is put in a locker, and the corresponding key is put into your mailbox.

Seems way easier and the only way this is better is if the touchscreen system works for signature required packages, allowing them to be dropped off without you

I addressed the "dumb" boxes in my original comment. But another point is that these hubs can be "appended" to buildings without these parcel rooms/infrastructure that are offered by those larger apartment buildings.

There are plenty of other properties that could utilize this too such as multi-tenant office buildings and plenty of other non-apartment building use cases.

It also productizes these boxes so they can buy one of these instead of setting of a mail center and doing the subsequent maintenance (ie: cutting keys, replacing lost ones, etc). And it notifies the people by email/mobile which makes it a nice value add-on for property owners to sell with the property.

Why can't a 'dumb' hub be appended as well? I have them at my new apt complex now, not the 'smart' ones, and they seem to work alright. It's right next to the mailboxes for the complex. Again, it's only USPS that uses the 'dumb' hub, all the other companies just drop things off at the door. It's not a big deal, at least for the area I live in.

> There is a low-tech solution for this already..you have normal package lockers near the mailroom which have keys. Your package is put in a locker, and the corresponding key is put into your mailbox.

How would that work with multiple delivery services? A FedEx or UPS worker, for instance, cannot legally put a package locker key into a USPS mailbox (and usually, in apartment mailbox banks, cannot even physically do so even if they are willing to ignore the law).

The USPS already partners with all the big carriers for Amazon deliveries, so they could solve the problem.

Alternatively: put in boxes not owned by the usps, and use combination locks. The "special delivery instructions" box on every order form on earth already supports this.

The main problems with outdoor lock boxes are moisture and heat. The main problem with indoor ones is that you need a mail room, and they tend to be shared.

I don't see how this new product helps in most circumstances. I guess it could be useful in high crime urban settings, but mail lock boxes are already common there.

At my complex of 65 units, there are a total of 12 package lockers all smaller than 12"x12".

OnTrac has taken over most Amazon deliveries at this apartment. They don't know the door code to get in (ups/FedEx/usps do). So, they leave packages by the exterior door. Usually the wrong one.

"Fool-proof" never takes into account the ingenuity of fools. ;)

Japan is low-tech. The lockers are near the mailboxes.

Mailman puts the package in the mailbox which has a keypad and low-tech 1980's calculator style 1 line display.

He put package in locker. It generates and displays a pin-code, he write it down on a slip of paper with the locker number and puts it in your mailbox.

Works very well.

(I think he has to swipe a card to allow him to lock the thing in the first place. To stop random people using it).

Swipe a card? At least in my building there's no need. It's hard to imagine random people messing with it.

The low-tech thing has its downsides: the other day the delivery guy wrote down the wrong code so I had to wait for the building manager to open it.

That said, I agree that it works very well. And I think it's a somewhat recent innovation. Apart from my current apartment none of the places I've lived here (10+ years) had lockers.

I have lockers next to the mailbox and I'm in the US. They just put a key to the locker in your box and then you go unlock the locker and the key is 'caught' and won't re-close. Yeah, it's not a perfect system, but it doesn't go out when the power goes down and it isn't going to get taken over by Bratslavian hackers to try to sell my neighbors Viagra via Twitter and even the most tech-illiterate/disabled people can use it fine.

Back when I lived in Seattle, I had Amazon packages delivered to an Amazon Locker precisely because issues like this. Even when I am at home, it is difficult for the delivery person to ring up at the doorbell.

In Australia, Amazon outsourced the lockers to "ParcelPoint", which I believe is a Toll company. The issue is they haven't updated their locker addresses here for years, and I found out the hard way that at least two addresses near me had stopped accepting Amazon packages.

why not use auspost parcel lockers?

Can you guarantee that Amazon's delivery partner, iParcel, won't use a courier which is silently blocked by AusPost?

(I have been using the AusPost ones and I'm having more luck than I used to).

Seriously - if AusPost don't want to accept a delivery they won't even let you know, it's just returned to sender.

I've never had that happen and have had lots of deliveries from both ebay sellers and amazon. Everything has always been delivered

Personally, I just get all my packages delivered to work. I guess that's not an option for everyone.

My large megacorp has an explicit policy forbidding employees from using work addresses for personal parcels - allegedly, they're concerned that shipments from overseas could lead to customs import paperwork being sent to them and being accidentally paid by the company, and, well, something something something security.

In my company, it's because half of those packages end up delivered to the warehouse behind the office building, and apparently the warehouse workers didn't like the additional workload.

something something something costs

I just ship my packages to the office instead. Always someone available to sign and no traffic issues.

Yeah, if you have to go pick up stuff, this kinda thing could help. I've never had to do that though, are you US based? My issue was that many other companies just left it on our doorstop, but DHL and a few others I'm forgetting insisted on using the machines when we were there. It was weird.

Again, I think they are nice enough most of the time, but the 'edge' cases make them a no-go for me.

why not have the packages delivered to work ? or for large white goods fridge wfh on that day