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Comment by Rainymood | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly really shocked by how casually people seem to steal these parcels, like what the hell?

I'm amused by how outraged they are: how could they do this to me? seems to be a common reaction, when of course they did it to themselves.

One secular take on it: humans are wack, yo.

One Judeo-Christian take on it: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" - Jeremiah 17:9

I appreciated the last person's reaction: to check out the mechanism.

Too bad the fart spray seemed to have ran out at that point. I was waiting for the guy to be sprayed...

Maybe version two will have a fart spray auto loader.

I think a way to aerate the fart spray into the glitter as it launches out would be a nice touch, not only would the glitter get on everything, it would smell bad and be hard to get out.

You could also add instant glue ;-)

As a European, I'm surprised that the postal services in the US just leave the packages outside, rather than ringing the doorbell and/or delivering it to a neighbor.

Over here in The Netherlands, pickup points are common (my local groceries store is one), you can choose your delivery time (also in the evening) and they will deliver it to a neighbor when I'm not home.

Why not avoid this whole problem with any of these options?

You can totally have them delivered to a store for pickup and there's even Amazon Lockers in some places to make it easier. You have to request it though and in most cases you'll have to do that after the package is shipped because Amazon will use whoever is cheapest to ship a particular package.

Half the time they'll just leave a not in the post box saying delivery attempted and to pick it up at the post office. Most new communities are switching to locking post boxes which have parcel lockers so that does help a lot. Problem is theres usually only two parcel lockers and during holidays they just toss the box at your door.

This does happen in many places, but I think you underestimate how much of the US is spread out over large areas. Suburbs are huge places. For example, here in Chicago, the suburbs extend for at least 20 miles in every direction... so to say this is an "Easy" challenge to solve is underestimating a bit for companies like Amazon or organizations like USPS.

Nobody's home during the day. What neighbor? How do you know which neighbor will be home, or which neighbor to trust? When 90% of your package recipients are not home, you spend 3x as much time per package delivery.

Carriers offload responsibility by allowing the sender or receiver to opt-out of signature/package acceptance, so why would they care?

Just one data point, but I've been having packages delivered to my home my entire life and never had a single one go missing. Seems like a really high cost to prevent something unlikely.

On the other hand, I had never had a home or vehicle broken into until someone smashed my car window last night at the movie theater. So, there's a first time for everything.

You can specify a neighbor in an online form. A commercial entity on the ground floor may be generous enough act as "neighbor", accept the packages in bulk and put them in the stairwell of the building. If neither of that works you still have pickup points in shops or dedicated lockboxes[0] in central locations.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/F0sDNJO.jpg

Huh, I haven't heard of shipping companies that allow you to designate a neighbor. That's cool.

I've not shipped to myself using an Amazon locker since I've never had an issue with package theft, but if a package is worth more than $500 or $1000 I'll often have it sent to my office, which I suspect is what most people do if possible.

This is also the norm in the UK.

If you're not in they try and leave the package with a neighbour. If that doesn't work, they'll try again, and if you're not there again, try for for a neighbour again. If that fails for a second time, they leave it at a nearby depot for you to pick it up.

I've never heard of a package being stolen here in the UK.

America: "It's a real problem! There is no solution!"

Overseas viewer: "This literally never happens here. Try solution (a), (b), or maybe (c) and see if that helps?"

America: "Yep there is no solution in the entire universe"

Substitute "package theft" for: Gun crime / public healthcare / public education / insert social issue here

I agree with all of your points except for the package theft one.

The package theft "solutions" proposed really are insanely inconvenient and unworkable* in most suburban environments. I've seen all of the reasons listed many places here, so I won't bother rehashing them. If I'm at work on Tuesday, for example, a redelivery attempt on Wednesday doesn't really help, does it?

* unworkable in the sense that they're less efficient than the alternative of just allowing the rare package theft to occur

My local Caltex/7-11/Fuel Stations all do package holding here in Aus, I honestly had similar thoughts until they started doing it. In the last 12 - 18 months I'd say I've had completely seamless package delivery because of it.

Thinking about it a bit, I bet one reason package holding isn't more popular in the US is the (very Australia-like) combination of suburbs, and people driving to work.

Assuming your employer allows it, it's convenient to have packages sent to work, AND if you drove a personal car to work, it's easy to drive your own package home. This equation gets flipped if you use transit or live in a multi-unit building where it might get easier to just hold it "downstairs".

I guess one reason it's less common over here is because it rains a lot, and it's a lot harder to leave a package in plain sight.

In Bristol, I've known a few people have packages stolen from porches or from under recycling boxes/bins, so it definitely does happen. My parents found someone in their hedge a few months ago trying to get one of their parcels.

Any important package I have delivered to work.

Dutchman here too. They don't usually deliver to a neighbour (hate it when they do that) but they just take it back to the parcel center, try again tomorrow, and if again unsuccessful you can just pick it up at your nearest parcel center. I don't keep track of different companies, but pretty sure it's DPD and PostNL that do it that way.

Choosing when they deliver either costs money (when you can choose during checkout), or you have to create an account and agree to some funny terms (I'd happily save them the trip, but they won't allow me to tell them without agreeing to a whole litany of things).

My experience has been that it depends heavily on who's doing the delivery.

US Postal Service staff usually do ring the doorbell when leaving packages, and, if nobody answers, they will make an effort to leave it in a concealed location if that's possible.

UPS and FedEx people in our area typically leave it by the door without ringing the doorbell, but usually do still try to conceal the package.

Amazon delivery people typically leave it out in the yard, next to the sidewalk.

I'm guessing the difference has a lot to do with the deliveries-to-time ratio that each company's drivers get.

It's funny because I really feel like I had a big downgrade when I moved from Japan to Germany. In Japan they ask you what times you expect to be home and they try to deliver it then. If you are not home, they come back another time. If they try several times and you are not there, then the package is returned. I was shocked when our packages were left with a neighbor here (why would you leave my stuff with a stranger?) and another time was left in the garbage storage area with a note in our mailbox.

I think Europe would have been a lot cooler if I had moved from the US straight there instead of coming from Japan :/

And many of those people were driving pretty nice cars! It wasn't exactly the homeless stealing packages to feed their family.

homeless are generally not thieves as if they could steal they wouldn't be homeless in the first place

What are they gonna do, steal a house?

You seem to be getting downvoted because you made a joke, but honestly. The more I look at that sentence:

>homeless are generally not thieves as if they could steal they wouldn't be homeless in the first place

The less sense it makes. I 100% do not understand what the OP was trying to say with that. It's nonsense if you really evaluate what it's saying.

maybe steal -> get caught -> go to prison -> no longer homeless?

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-loui...

Wasn't a homeless person, but in St. Louis Missouri a house isn't out of the question.

FWIW arranging to have a trailer/motorhome "stolen" is a not unheard of way of performing a (less than legal) eviction in some places.

In some states, once you get a renter, it is very hard to evict them. Many abuse this.

Once. After you get an eviction on your record few landlords will rent to you again.

Stealing (physically at least) is a stupid way to make money. A $200 game console will hardly net a thief $50. There are a lot of issues in my city with the less fortunate stealing items to make some small money - bikes are a common target. It neither really helps the thief, and it's very unfortunate for the person stolen from.

In California, thefts of under $950 are not felony crimes. And there's no more "three strikes". So you can steal packages for a living and, at worst, have to spend a week or two in jail over the course of a year. Not a bad living.

And occasionally, the packages contain runny used cat litter.

If I paid you $200, would you spend two weeks in jail?

If getting that $200 meant risk to you (someone confronting you, someone else taking your money, risk of an officer giving you a beat down), would you still take it?

It doesn't take a lot of risk to offset the "value" of stealing $950 labeled-worth goods (which will net you <$250 in cash).

Don't worry about the petty thief, they are smart enough about minimizing their own risk.

The parent poster said that you’d spend maybe two weeks in jail over the course of the year. It’s not a balance of $200 vs. 2wks jail, it’s a balance of ($200 per package x many packages per day * 365 days per year) vs. 2wks jail.

If I was poor and did not see a light at the end of the tunnel, I would go to jail for free. Your tax dollars would pay for my lodging, food, exercise and hanging out with my friends. Jail is also a great place to network and improve your knowledge of the system and criminal techniques.

I was in jail for awhile but, regrettably, learned no new criminal techniques. In fact, most people seemed pretty reticent to talk about crimes or why they were in there. I did learn how to make a nutritious paste from commissary food, how to hide sugar packets in a mattress, and how to make a chess set out of toilet paper and toothpaste. I also found out that drugs are extremely cheap in jail--costing just one or two candy bars--since many people in jail have child support judgements against them and are effectively barred from using the commissary. Having access to the commissary can have a profound effect on your comfort in jail, so if you're a homeless person with some small passive income (and no child support!) it might be all right. I could see doing it through a harsh winter, but personally I'd probably choose the streets most of the time. The food you get might not be as regular, but it'll be more varied and probably more nutritious than what you'll find in a cell.

You also have to discount that by the probability of actually getting caught because the police barely care about property crime cases and even with video of the person stealing the package the work nontrivial work of tracking the person down isn't worth the hassle. So is 50-100 bucks with a small chance of actually suffering any consequences at all.

It doesn't take a lot of risk to offset the "value" of stealing $950 labeled-worth goods (which will net you <$250 in cash).

If you're trying to say the risk isn't worth it, sure, you're right. And the average person wouldn't do it. But plenty of criminals don't live their lives by such risk/reward calculations. Roughly 5% [0] of people in prison in the US have decided to disregard the risk/reward ratio and go ahead with relatively small scale thefts.

[0] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

The question though is would that 5% react to increased punishment. The studies done on raising felony theft thresholds indicate that they don't.

agreed, they'd probably need to be substantially higher to really enter criminal's conscious consideration to put a dent in things, and even then it might only be a small dent, if any. Especially when the motivation is something like drug addiction.

Thus the reasoning behind the "three strikes and you're out" laws which call for mandatory prison sentencing for habitual criminals.

Some will not be dissuaded from crime. The rest of us deserve to live apart from them.

That is indeed the reasoning, but there is no good evidence that 3 strike laws reduce crime.

In fact multiple studies suggest that 3 strike laws have unintended consequences like increased fatal attacks on police, and twice sentenced criminals committing more serious crimes (because they will recieve a life sentence regardless of the seriousness of the offense).

You're asking on HN, so the answer is probably a "no".

Relative value of time and money might be different outside of this bubble.

When I was a young kid, my mom once told me that she never wanted to hear of me committing a crime I couldn't retire on. She doesn't remember saying it, this was an offhand statement when we saw a news item about someone stealing $20 from a gas station and doesn't really reflect how she looks at things AFAIK.

Oddly, it really stuck in my mind and was present when I decided not to be peer pressured into a few incidents. It changed the equation - it wasn't about fear of getting caught, which everyone was saying wouldn't happen, it became about BEING STUPID, which would be true regardless. What's more, it wasn't an outright "don't do this", but instead "do this only if" which also changed the evaluation (It wasn't "I must be good, always"). Of course, I never HAD the chance to do a crime I would retire on when I was a kid, so the end result was that I lived generally crime-free.

Later I developed my own sense of morals and criteria on why to do/not do things, but I really feel like that advice helped me avoid potential problems in life before I reached that point. I recommend the advice to all new parents, though I don't think anyone has taken me up on the advice yet :)

I have a vague memory of getting the same advice at some point. It really is useful, and for more than simply returning a "do not do this" for effectively everything; in my experience it's also a forcing function for deeper risk-reward analysis. In my case that analytical mindset expanded to cover to more than just "should I commit this crime or crime-ish thing". Should I grab an extra cookie from the jar? Should I rush across this street instead of walking down to the sidewalk to reach a crosswalk? Should I commit this bad code to get the patch out faster? Etc.

The hilarious thing, of course, is looking at the news and seeing so many people commit crimes that they actually could retire off of... and then fail to retire, keep committing crimes, and get caught. Also a useful life lesson!

I'm pretty sure that would be a terrible living...

I'm actually surprised the youtube-guy doesn't go back to the police at this point, because what they have stolen is a prototype-product, which is worth whatever the inventor says it is worth; Anyone taking this package is committing a felony at this point - which might be worth these lazy-ass cops' time.

> I'm actually surprised the youtube-guy doesn't go back to the police at this point, because what they have stolen is a prototype-product, which is worth whatever the inventor says it is worth

No, it's worth whatever a court determines the fair market value is.

IMNAL, but I'm thinking of existing cases of software theft/etc. where seemingly arbitrary values are accepted by the courts.

Maybe you do have to argue the point in court, but 6 months of R&D is easily worth way more than $1000.

Stealing mail is a federal offense, so it doesn't matter what the state laws are. Now that applies specifically to deliveries by USPS ( Theft or receipt of stolen mail matter generally [1]). Stealing shipments by UPS or FedEx can also be considered a federal offense if the package crossed state lines during shipment (Theft from Interstate Shipment[2]).

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708 [2] https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1333-gen...

People steal PLANTS from neighborhoods around here. Plants, planted into the GROUND. There are worthless people everywhere in this world.

My grandpa has pomegranate trees on his property that have been stolen from a few times. It's heartbreaking cause of the amount of work he puts into caring for them. And these trees are picked CLEAN with nothing left behind which is just cruel.

Wtf? Are people stealing them to eat? To sell? I mean, I have a small amount of sympathy if someone needs to feed their family and can't afford food, but if someone is just trying to make $10, that's really sad.

Now THAT is cold-blooded.

If you are stealing the parcels, you gotta have to do it casually, or you'll look suspicious.

Doing it casually or not doesn’t matter when your on camera. The cops won’t do anything with that evidence, so how does it matter?

Don't want people seeing you and calling the cops/following you.

This fear of the cops is only a thing if you actually believe the cops will respond. Package thieves know the average response time will give them plenty of time to get away. These types of videos just re-enforce that to any would be thief. The amount of news coverage with video evidence showing the thieves NOT getting caught does not give pause to one thinking "maybe I can get away with it too".

I know I've made lots of comments about police response in this thread, but I'm not trying to come across as too negative. However, there's a reason this type of crime is prevalent. Police cannot be everywhere all of the time. At this point in time, I personally would be more worried about the homeowner staging a trap with a shotgun rather than a glitter bomb. That would be legal in Texas.

This is a thief skill. You need to act casually not to look suspicious.

I'm guessing people with a gambling streak and zero morals would be drawn to it. Think about it: you never know what you may get. Could be a valuable watch, could be some desk pencil holder.

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