Hacker News Reader

Amazon is pitching the Amazon Locker tech to apartment buildings now https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/27/amazon-launches-the-hub-pa...

Having used them a bunch while working at Amazon they're super nice, but not very practical for large/heavy packages because I had to get them back home. Getting one at or near my home would obviously make me order everything I could to it. It would also remove my biggest complaint about AMZL deliveries not being able to get into my freaking mailroom.

At the risk of driving further off topic, but AMZL delivery people being confused and/or unable to get into my building mailroom has been a particular nightmare the last few deliveries for me, too.

I appreciate they are trying to be more strict in their deliveries than in the past and want to try to lose fewer packages than they used to, but the tools at their disposal to handle this (versus UPS, FedEx, and USPS) are woefully under-developed. The web form to respond to delivery failures doesn't have enough options (and is very suburb focused at that), and at this point I would almost prefer a pickup location option and just pickup things from some equivalent of a UPS Store or Post Office.

Maybe they could put Amazon Lockers in Whole Foods or something?

(I guess to end somewhat on topic: the mailroom issue is precisely why Amazon Key wouldn't work for me. It seems like a far more suburban solution to the problem.)

There's another locker company, Luxer One, that takes deliveries from all of the carriers, not just Amazon. Probably others out there.

The Hub lockers (i would say Amazon lockers as well? i've always seen UPS people filling them...) can accept deliveries from all delivery services, not just AMZL.

Parcel Pending also does it. I've been in apartments that used Luxer One, and apartments that used Parcel Pending; as a consumer there really is no differentiator.

With USPS P.O. Boxes, you can sign a side agreement (no additional cost) and they will accept other shippers' deliveries to you and hold them in the Post Office system as long as you use the proper street address format for the P.O..

There is a set of amazon lockers at my local Whole Foods. They're one step ahead of you every time!

Unfortunately, not all Whole Foods Market stores.

Turns out that competitors like Target don’t like this practice, and if they have a rental agreement with the landlord that lets them place restrictions on what kinds of services will be allowed on the property, then they will use those to keep out competitors.

The only choice for Whole Foods is to put their store in, but they can’t have an Amazon Locker.

Every single AMZL package I've had in the past month has been delayed. What's more frustrating, there's no actual reason for it being delayed.

The last one that was delayed was delayed for 2 days. I contacted chat and apparently it was because they couldn't get into the mailroom and were waiting on delivery instructions.

I don't know from whom, because I was never contacted.

Same here. I had two in a row for which I was told had been "delivered", yet they didn't assign the pickup codes. Therefore, they were lost in limbo forever (although after some amount of time they just get returned to Amazon).

Both were Daily Deals, and Amazon refused to honor the sale price for replacements. Nice.

> I can only conclude that the real goal is to get you to install those cameras

I suspect that the ultimate goal is to grant home access to their home-services pros (ie home cleaners) while you are away.

Also food delivery, so they could put food in your fridge. It's not hard to imagine Amazon stocking everyone's pantries during the day while people are at work.

Amazon should have bought TaskRabbit for that!

Kind of an amazing age where the concept of a butler on demand is available to the middle class. I don't like the idea for myself, but the concept is incredible.

Actually, for the middle class (which was admittedly somewhat smaller than what we may think of as "middle class" now) domestic help was pretty normal before the 20th century. http://www.bradford-delong.com/2013/01/agatha-christie-i-nev... is somewhat telling; Agatha Kristie's Wikipedia entry says her family was "upper middle-class", but it's not that common for families like that to have live-in help nowadays. Except maybe au pair arrangements.

Having occasional domestic help has been typical of the middle class in capitalist societies for a long time; in early capitalist societies, often full-time rather than occasional, but with smaller staff than the upper class.

Why can't the real goal be the stated one? It's already very beneficial to Amazon, serving to further build a moat around Amazon being where you buy everything.

This constant lazy conspiracy theorizing every time a large company does anything is really grating.

But it's also a worthwhile exercise. Should we just always take them at their word? History has proven we shouldn't.

i was responding to the parent who said " I can only conclude" so i thought that providing an alternative conclusion would add to the discussion.

i don't think this is lazy conspiracy... many amazon pages in the U.S. heavily promote their home services offerings so it is clearly an important initiative for them. furthermore, "amazon key" does solve a really big problem with home services: service pros typically work during the business day, but some (perhams most) of the best customers are at work during that time.

That's a good point. There are probably other possibilities, but I think that this is about more than package delivery.

Haven't a bunch of people failed to establish themselves as that particular middleman?

(pretty much because anyone good at doing the cleaning can just cut out the middleman)

> if it fails, the failure is contained

What about the failure mode when the courier doesn't follow your parents instructions and leaves the package on the porch?

Now you have the code to the lockbox of the key to the house sitting on the porch where anyone who approaches can gain access to the house.

The lockbox was for the packages themselves, not for the keys to the house.

Oh boy, took your comment to finally get this. I take lockbox to mean the thing you put on the front door itself to gain access to the house.

It means that, too - real estate agents use the term for the little key box they use to let other agents see vacant houses.

Personally I'd use the term "locker" to refer to a box placed outside in which to store packages.

You change the code, and a few packages get stolen just as would happen if you didn't have the box.

Don't put your house key inside the lockbox!

> ...in fact, it's so much a better solution that I can't imagine Amazon hadn't considered it.

I agree that it seem a better solution to the one scenario you're mentioning: delivering packages.

But if you watch the video in the article [1], they describe other scenarios: "maybe let in your dog walker, a friend, or maybe to let in a team of cleaning ninjas"

I don't think it's too far-fetched to see the 'friend' here being actually your airbnb guest. Many airbnb homes already use a rudimentary lockbox with code, if the guest can now instead set up something on their amazon account and know they'll be able to get in (at least the initial check-in, and have a key waiting on the coffee table), it could make the experience smoother for the guests, and the host as well.

[1] https://youtu.be/wn7DBdaUNLA?t=30s

I could see HOAs having a problem with porch cubbies.

Also how do you include the code? Address line 2? 3? Memo? I don't always see these.

Good question. There's only so much room on 4x6 labels. Also I haven't seen a shipping solution that automatically prints customer notes on label. As for address lines, UPS has a finite amount of characters per line before they drop off.

I use a mail service the requires 1 or 2 lines more than a normal address. It's a huge pain filling out shipping address forms online to include the extra info. A lot of it ends up in the Name field. Truncation is also a problem when the label printers truncate more than the form validation.

All of my future projects will have 5 line shipping address forms.

Slightly off topic, but reminded me of an issue I had with Amazon for months. I work for a small agency, the name of which begins with "Box" and then a number. No matter where I put it in the delivery address, Amazon (or the delivery service) would change the business name to "PO Box ..."

I ended up working around it by removing all spaces from the business name in my shipping address.

Ha, must have been a pain for companies that require a real, physical address for whatever. I have most certainly interacted with APIs that had that requirement, and their regexes for refusing PO Boxes were generous, to put it lightly.

Fuck HOAs, I guess.

I think it's just address line 2. There's a note on the porch telling them to look for the code. It doesn't always work, but it doesn't really need to. At least not where they live.

There's almost always a "special delivery instructions" field.

Ideally, the cubbie would work like a PostOffice drop box and have a way to insert packages at will with out a code and then the owner has a key to unlock the cubbie.

Perhaps something like a old-fashioned padlock? Anyone can click it shut and then you need the key to unlock it again.

Yeah, that's the traditional package box. This is an example: http://www.pe.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/oh4/oh4e3m-b8...

The issue with that is people know if there's a package in there or not, you can't have more than one delivery service come in a single day, and you run the risk of vandals running off with your lock.

Someone is leaving dog shit on your neighbor's lawn. It's not you, you pick up after your dog, but your neighbor is convinced it's you.

Late one night, your neighbor saunters up to your drop box and empties a bag full of dog shit into it.

You seem to have great neighbors. Maybe ... talk with them?

> Also how do you include the code? Address line 2? 3? Memo? I don't always see these.

Technically as far as USPS is concerned, there are only 3 lines in an address: name, address, and city/state/zip. Address line 2/3 are non-standard and are disregarded, and you may put whatever delivery instructions in there you want.

If you have an address like "Room 321" that should go as part of Address Line 1.

However, mail is delivered by human beings and generally speaking you can get a surprising amount of mail delivered with non-standard addresses. It used to be quite common to give addresses in the form of "Red House on Easy Street at the top of the hill" and this will still usually make it through. See: "Falsehood: An address will be comprised of road names".

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907301

  Address line 2/3 are non-standard

Addresses spread over multiple lines are just concatenated into one.

  They include the combination to unlock it in the delivery address

Most shipping software will "standardize" addresses, contorting it to CASS standards, often thereby omitting unparsable add-ons.

In fact, most will contort my address to something the USPS will bounce back to the shipper if the P.O. takes its rules to the letter ("#123" gets changed to "UNIT 123", which the USPS considers invalid).

My apartment complex had the same thing, except the box held a key to the front door. But then some junkies literally chiseled out the box from the masonry. Now I think they just gave UPS a key and they give it to whoever does the deliveries. There are so many better low-tech solutions that aren't complete security and liability nightmares.

We'll have to see how this plays out in terms of whether FedEx, USPS, the multitude of delivery startups out there get "locked out" of the system and are at the mercy of the user needing to be around to receive packages, while Amazon provides their secure in-home deliveries.

I wonder if that would be sufficient grounds for an antitrust suit if it happens.

Doubtful, the other players wouldn't be in any different scenario than they were before Amazon tried this.

> I find the "include the code in the address" solution pretty elegant, though. This seems to me like a better solution for their suburban single-family house. ...in fact, it's so much a better solution that I can't imagine Amazon hadn't considered it

Not following, Amazon has an option for "include key code" in their orders

But no option to instruct the delivery person to use that for anything other than access to a gate or building common area. He's taking the concept one step further to using the code for the delivery person to open one's main/front door.

having a code for a box outside vs the ability to access your house is the idea..

Amazon could use this idea to generate a unique code in your address every time you order a delivery, thus removing the requirement that couriers use a special app. The code would expire after a single use, after the package is signaled to have been delivered, or after x days -- whichever comes first.

Even better would be just a large post box, locked door on the back / side, large chute opening on the front.

Or a night safe style sliding opening in to a large metal box or in to the house through a wall.

This way the delivery person doesn't need to know a pin etc.