Hacker News Reader

Comment by arrozconcosas | Hacker News Reader

Why is it so acceptable for packages to be stolen? Imagine in the old days you went to a mall, bought something, and on the walk to the car someone ran by and grabbed your shopping bag and ran. This happens 100x more often today and there are seemingly zero consequences for it.

View on HN

Legally, one is a theft while the other is likely a robbery. Robbery is generally treated more seriously.

As for frequency, people are more likely to take something if they don't have to confront a person. There are also a lot more packages available to steal today since more people order online now.

I’m simply surprised that there hasn’t been minimal cooperation from package carriers to develop a one time key system for porch lockboxes. The boxes wouldn’t even need to be robust.

Package carrier walks up. Scans the package, taps the scanner to the box, drop the package in the box, and off we go.

Sell them at Home Depot. People would buy.

The major shipping carriers offer a service where you can have them put packages inside a garage door or other place.

Even then I find about half of my packages still end up on the front porch despite me indicating otherwise using the carrier's service to indicate where to leave packages. I haven’t had a package stolen in very many years so I guess that’s a good thing.

Please god not another "smart" gadget, just use a bent piece of metal:

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/book-drop-picture-id979...

But neither of our ideas will work, because the boxes are too big some of the time.

Installing a drop box is significantly more complicated than putting a cheap, plastic garden box on your porch/lawn/etc. The only thing “smart” about the box is the electric lock. It wouldn’t need to be connected to any network.

It’s a low value crime of opportunity. Merely hiding packages visually would likely prevent most incidents.

Why wouldn't thieves just take the whole box?

Look at 50-100 gallon deck boxes. Even if you drove around with a truck, how many could you possibly fit in the back?

You don’t even know if they contain anything of value and most would probably be empty.

These thieves are just snatching a dozen (or two or three) small boxes at a time, opening them in an alley (or whatever) and dumping anything that isn’t of value.

Probably because Amazon replaces most of them.

We care less because for the most part everyone is much better off than we used to be. Material wealth is easier to acquire and with less physical effort.

I always wondered if this is US specific. In Europe, as far as I know, the package would simply be delivered by the neighbor, they return the next day, or you have to get it from the local convenience store or some centralized lock-box.

Package theft is a problem, but it’s not as rampant as you’d believe from reading internet comments. The number of packages delivered to houses in the US every day is staggeringly high, so even a small percentage of package thefts will manifest as a lot of anecdotes.

Package theft also varies heavily by location. I live in a medium sized city but I actually don’t know anyone who has had a package stolen off their porch. I’ve easily had over a thousand packages left at my (highly visible) porch all afternoon over the years without a single theft.

OTOH, if I lived in a few certain cities I wouldn’t want to leave any packages lying out for any period of time.

I also do not know of anyone who has experienced package theft in the US between a few cities on both coasts and suburbs in a variety of states. But they all live in upper middle class or richer neighborhoods or buildings, so there is probably a lot of selection bias.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com