BufferBox (YC S12) Solves The Problem Of Missing Packages | Hacker News Reader

BufferBox (YC S12) Solves The Problem Of Missing Packages

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122 pointsdko81 comments

I'm starting to notice a trend with this latest YC class-- lots of unsexy products addressing really specific pain points.

Agreed. While I can't see myself needing this service any time soon, clearly it's a problem big enough to build out physical infrastructure to solve.

If the buffer box company had closer relationships with amazon's distribution and that other company that wants to do any deliveries in an hour, there could be an interesting market in the future.

Tons of opportunity to disrupt an old industry which has remained largely unchanged since the advent of the internet

Products solving specific pain points: Bring them on

There's an opportunity cost though. A product that's solving a specific pain point can be good and even profitable, but it's never going to take off the way a truly disruptive product does.

I suspect what's happening is that startups themselves, like everything else, are being commoditized.

DHL has those in Germany. In fact over 2400. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation I'm an avid and happy user. Of course something like BufferBox would have been better, but I understand that investment does make a lot more sense as a parcel delivery service, as you bind customers to you. I hope they break up that monopoly at some point.

The question is why nobody did something like this before BufferBox in the US? Normally we are the less innovative ones :)

> The question is why nobody did something like this before BufferBox in the US?

Because there is a post office in almost every US town with postal mailboxes available? You can use that to have all USPS packages and mail delivered.

There are also UPS Stores, Fedex Kinkos, 7-Elevens, etc. which offer the same service, plus allow from delivery from private carriers.

On top of that, for 99% of Americans, having your package dropped off at your door is just fine. Nobody is going to take it. And if you're that paranoid, just have it delivered to your neighbor or to your office.

I really don't understand what void this product is trying to fill.

>On top of that, for 99% of Americans, having your package dropped off at your door is just fine.

You really can't pull numbers out of a hat like that. How many people live in an apartment with no front doorman, or requires a buzz code to get in? Probably more than 1% of Americans.

Or what if you ordered a shiny new laptop from Amazon? Would you leave it at your front door, even if you live in a safe area? I personally wouldn't.

Plus, These guys started in Canada, it's unfair to judge from purely American point of view.

I'd use it. I have a UPS Store box for receiving deliveries, but it closes early enough that I can only check it on Saturdays, and it costs as much as recurring semi-weekly BufferBox deliveries (which is more than I would use). A post office box would be worse than that, in closing earlier and refusing private shippers. I have yet to see an Amazon locker in a 7-Eleven; it's a good idea but useless when you order from anyone else (which of course is partly why they can justify the effort). I might consider home deliveries if I had a house on a cul-de-sac with an enclosed porch, but it'd be crazy in an office or apartment building full of strangers (which is, what, 1/3 of Americans?)

I was hoping to see Drop Locker (pivot of Laundry Locker, as I understand it) get into this in San Francisco, but so far they seem to just be looking for partners without having found any.

I was also shocked when I read this article. Didn't know those boxes don't exist in the US. They are quite convenient!

Second that! Love the Packstations in Germany, can't wait to have Bufferbox in SF!

I've been waiting so long for something like this.

The second this shows up in Boston, I can personally guarantee half a dozen users without even bothering to survey. My building has a huge stolen package problem, due to the front door facing a main road, and the UPS driver for our area being an idiot. My last building had a driver who never left anything if you weren't home. While that's better than theft, it's still annoying to take two buses and walk ten minutes to pick up a package by hand. And then walk ten more minutes and take two more buses to carry the thing home. The whole process usually took upwards of two hours.

My only concern is getting the drivers to actually use these things correctly. I've found multiple packages addressed to me left outside the front door, despite explicit instructions not to do that both given by the shipper and posted on the door. Each of these packages were apparently signed for... just not by anyone who lives here. So yeah, getting the driver to follow instructions isn't going to be easy.

Is there a post office near you?

Have the packages delivered to "<Your name> General Delivery" at the post office, then pick them up with a photo ID. (But check with the post office first, only the larger/central post offices support this.)

It's best if you can ship it USPS. UPS will sometimes deliver to a post office (if you put in the address of the post office), but not always.

As of right now, one of the reasons why you pay for this service is because it's shipped to an address first where the BufferBox team accepts packages for you. They bring the packages over and fill the lockers.

So, there's no reason for you to need the driver to follow instructions.

We've watched this team expand their footprint and execute on a complex hardware product in a very short amount of time. Package logistics is a huge problem to solve, but if anyone can do it, they can. Congrats guys!

Huge thanks!! Appreciate the support.

Just curious, how have you guys been doing YC? How many have gone to the US vs stay at the homebase?

As a user of the service since it was in its MVP stage, I really like the service and I'm excited to see them grow.

To hear that they have a big vision is great. Partnerships with retailers is one thing, but the potential for them to make key innovations on the logistical side of things is huge. I think they can make some big moves in this space (outside of boxes).

I'm curious how they'll address the "only ship to billing addresses" problem?

What if the package doesn't fit in any of the available compartments? Does the customer get notified they're package is about to arrive in X (hours, minutes, etc)? This could lead to an angry customer who decided to plan their day around retrieving said package at the estimated arrival time and they find out it's not there?

For select distributors, the customer gets to use BB for 'free'. How is this possible? Doesn't that mean those distributors are increasing the cost of shipping to pay BB for using your storage boxes? Why would a distributor want to use BB rather than the current individual shipping locations model?

Based on the ones that I've seen around UWaterloo, they have different sized compartments for differently sized shipments. I'd feel comfortable shipping a snowboard through their box.

You punch in the key code they give you, and the box your package is in pops open.

Apparently they take a percentage of the charge that FedEx/etc would take - it saves the shipping company tons of money not having to have an office/make multiple trips.

Also: How does the parcel service get into the locker? Are the lockers inside a retail store front or more like a vending machine that could be (outside) anywhere?

Packages are sent to a "central" BufferBox address and BB staff fills the locker

The box in UWaterloo is in a public building in high-traffic area. (almost like a vending machine).

The delivery man (based on some sort of arrangement) fills up the lockers, telling BufferBox what's in each one.

So, should BufferBox pay 7-Eleven, or should the money transfer in the other direction? On one hand, the BufferBox takes up valuable floorspace, especially in the urban markets most likely to be BufferBox's bread and butter. On the other hand, effectively guaranteeing 20+ people walking through the front doors of a store every day certainly has value. What percentage of people receiving packages will realize while walking past the refrigerator case that they have no beer in their fridge?

It sounds great.

But will USPS deliver to one of these? Are they even legally allowed to? Or are you limited to private shippers like UPS, FedEx, etc.?

Yes. They are addressed boxes, but are not PO boxes (for some reason).

They aren't located inside of post offices.

I think this is kind of a portable PO box, or PO box you can franchise. It seems there are things moving to kiosk despensers like redbox, blockbuster, even those change counting machines in the supermarket!

This is like a redbox for delivery. They could easily grow integration with package delivery companies, or they could compete by buying their own trucks and hiring drivers. This service will be very interesting to watch.

So, if your corporate records are stored in a kiosk box, doesn't that mean that you can set up your company's address there?

Could one use this sort of thing to convert any café into a co-working outfit?

Also, can I drop a package in one bufferbox and have it delivered to another?

You want to borrow my snowboarding helmet, goggles and gloves. I drop them in my box, select a destination, and buffer box teleports them to your box. Reverse the process when your done with it. Also, I let it be COD - meaning that you, the borrower, pay for the round trip buffer transfer cost.

You mean like a post box?

I have never seen this process work with a post box. Please package in box SFO-03-01-AA and select it to be delivered to NYC-12-02-AC.

While the logistical process is the same, its much more like an inter-office mailstop than it is a post box.

I really like this idea. As someone who doesn't have an office to send packages to or a doorman, I will use it.

I'm actually interested in seeing how they'll address utilization if it gets popular. What if 100% of the spaces are taken, and someone decides to wait a few days to pick up their package. Is there a penalty fee to prevent such behavior?

They need a "have bike messenger deliver my box to me" button. A box-buffer-biker if you will.

Again, seeing how kozmo.com was 10 years ahead of its time!

These are very useful. Here in Ireland that service already exists as ParcelMotel.

As someone who has used ParcelMotel, I can't help but notice the differences between the things I love about the PM site that aren't on the BufferBox site. BB use uninspiring stock images but PM have commissioned an entire set of custom artwork that's a strong brand and very cutsey and describes their service using metaphors.

PM are very explicit about the pricing. It takes up a big chunk of their homepage. After several minutes I still can't find how much bufferbox costs!

And do BB only email out the PIN? Surely sending it to everyone by SMS would be a better idea?

The product is a great idea and it's implemented so well through different companies here in Europe. It's good to see something similar starting off over there also.

It's interesting that ParcelMotel's site blocks all crawlers, including Google. Do they rely on a very strong offline presence and have no need for organic online marketing?

User-agent: * Disallow: /

Deleted comment

Obligatory pedantic reply: it's "piqued" not "peaked"!

Source: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/peaked.html, Paul Brians, Professor of English at WSU

Hey, then you could also check out 'GFYS'..you might like doing it..who knows (:

There's a very big vision here. E-commerce growth provides a tremendous opportunity for this company to not only rethink the end point but the network itself. We have one at my office and it's incredibly convenient. I completely stopped using my home address for any deliveries.

Glad to hear you're loving the service Ryan! Thanks for all the support, we'll see you around the Hub soon!

Until you move.

There should be a bufferbox address field in your LinkedIn profile, it will auto update if you change jobs. Bufferbox then just checks against the current box address via LinkedIn and no hassles for the future.

These are ugly things, and I'm sure that it wont be long before they are used for nefarious purposes.

So instead of going to the UPS offices to pick up the package for free, I instead go to one of these for a fee. I don't see the advantage, there are UPS locations everywhere and are easy enough to get to.

This just seems like an ugly solution to a not real problem, and with a WebVan like costly infrastructure before it's even remotely useful. There has to be enough of these ugly green boxes to be more convenient than the just going to the shipping depot, the cost to get to that point seems prohibitively high, after any significant number of boxes they will become targets for theft and vandalism too, another operations cost to deal with. Webvan revisited.

You seem to have a very myopic viewpoint, unable to see that just because you may not have a use for this, it couldn't possibly solve an actual problem. If you live in the city and don't have a car, getting packages can be a huge pain. I live in San Francisco, and would love a service like this. Packages can't be delivered to my apartment (the door opens onto a city street), and since I don't drive to work having packages delivered there can by annoying as well. If one of these were installed within a few blocks of me I would very happily use it.

>I don't see the advantage, there are UPS locations everywhere and are easy enough to get to.

You must not live in Canada, or any place that isn't super urban. Also, not everyone has a car. I can imagine myself using this if I lived in a dorm, especially far away from home (speaking out of experience).

On theft an vandalism, from what I see in their current installations, they're installed in busy areas inside train stations and school buildings. That's a lot better than hiding things under your door mat or tossing things over backyard fence.

Have you ever gone to UPS to pick up a package? I've tried before - I ended up just deciding to wait for redelivery. If you've ever lived in an apartment complex that's gated/closed, you miss a ton of packages.

There is also the receipt of packages while away on vacation, etc. Certainly not a huge market, but I don't think its fair to say this isn't a "real" problem.

I reached out to these guys seeing how I could set one up in my city. Never heard from them.

Looks like they're focused on Toronto: "The team has plans to expand into 100 new locations, including convenience stores, grocery stores, and transit stations within Toronto"

The service sounds useful as a way to receive deliveries (and potentially a place to drop off a small package for pickup later by yourself in the same day).

Is that what the mysterious "GTA" on their site means? "Greater Toronto Area"? Groan..

If so, they could probably save themselves a lot of puzzled support emails by expanding the TLA.

People in Toronto know what GTA stands for.

It seems to be an "open" variant (i.e., works for private couriers) of what Canada Post does.

If you're not home (or if the Canada Post courier is lazy - the one that covers my neighborhood just leaves tags instead of ringing the doorbell), they just leave a tag at your door or superbox and drop the parcel off at a local retail location for pickup.

Purolator is also doing something similar here too.

tweet @BufferBox, someone will definitely reply!

It should be clear on the homepage which cities are currently being served.

I signed up, hoping to see a list of locations, but the only option is to edit/cancel my account? Definitely not ready for launch...

On the very form where they collect your email:

"Receive your online orders at our new parcel kiosks in the Toronto area"

Very ingenious, that box has just been updated...

Having had stuff stolen from my front porch before (because I wasn't around to collect the package)...this sounds like a pretty clever idea.

This may take off, but they need some sort of unlimited plan as well. The reason Amazon Prime does so well is because some people can't get over the mental hurdle of paying for shipping. At $3 per package, on top of whatever existing shipping rate there is, BufferBox could be seen as cost-prohibitive to many frequent online shoppers.

Amazon do this in the UK with their Locker service[1]. I haven't tried it, but it seems like a good idea and solves a problem I've certainly run into in the past.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...

We had a system exactly like this in Norway. It was run by the Norwegian postal service. It was shut down after just a year or two of operation due to lack of use, although it's evident that the main cause was mismanagement. Very few people were actually aware that the system existed.

zBox.com solved the problem of not-home package delivery and pickup, with weather-resistant IR-wireless crypto-locked locking boxes in 1999-2000[1]. The USPS, UPS and Fedex driver's existing Palm-based scanners would communicate either by IRDA to the box front panel, or would display a secure unlock code to be typed into the keypad, encrypted based on current time of day, vendor, and customer. zBox had testing deals with the three top package co's, and had funding from USPS and Whirlpool. They went broke and shut down in 2001. I still have an electronics package, and a dev kit.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20010721122740/http://www.zbox.co...

The French post office (la Poste) have been offering that service for a few years, it's very convenient. very surprised it didn't exist before in the US.

http://www.cityssimo.fr/

I'm not sure I get this one. Why would you not want something delivered to your house? Isn't that what the post office does if you aren't there to accept the package?

In NYC at least (admittedly an outlier in the united states), most apartments don't have doormen and there's no place to leave packages and package pickup locations are almost uni formally in warehouse districts/boroughs hard to access via public transit

Same here in Montevideo, Uruguay.

I actually had thought of a variant on the idea, but never implemented it. I love it, and would like to have it implemented here (maybe if things are going better for me next year, I could partner with them :) ).

There's a lot of potential IMO.

Most people I know in NYC get their packages delivered to their office.

USPS won't take UPS or FedEx. UPS and FedEx don't have a way into my building. I don't have a car to get out to the airport where the UPS center is. University mail room policy is no personal packages at work. So I basically can't shop online.

Not true!

If you can list the street address of the Post Office along with the P.O. Box number the USPS will accept it.

The reason FedEx, UPS, DHL, TNT, etc "don't deliver" to P.O. Boxes is that they don't maintain the same database of "which post office has which P.O. Box for which zip code" that the USPS does. If they don't maintain this mapping, how is the delivery driver supposed to know where to go?

I don't have a PO Box, just a gang box inside of my apartment door.

EDIT: but the owners of the pizza place next door know me pretty well, and they have received packages for me before

Post offices have very short hours. And most packages are delivered via UPS, Fedex etc. Their hours aren't much better and they have far fewer depots. When DHL still served the US I once had to drive 45 minutes (each way) to get to their depot which was only open 9-5.

I actually had to stay home from work today to take delivery of a tent that UPS would not leave, and would not allow me to pick up from the UPS facility. This sounds like a really awesome idea.

If you have a car, going down to the local UPS or FedEx depot usually isn't too bad but if you don't have a car (e.g. most people in NYC) it can be a real nightmare. In urban areas, depots tend to be in industrial areas with poor mass transit access. Accordingly, having a local, secure, place to have packages dropped would be a great service for the latter group.

Sure the package could be left at the post office, but happens when you go to pick it up, only to find out the office is closed? BufferBox allows you to pick up your package at your connivence.

So stoked on these guys. I met them about 6 months ago and was excited then as I am now :)

Really good job at using Bootstrap there. You guys have really made it your own.

Wow, these boxes are tiny. A Packstation is about 3 to 6 times as big.

I wonder how/if they can handle packages that need a signature?

A nice target for burglars :)

So is following around the UPS truck pretending to be doing door-to-door sales.

Meh!

Thats it..this is getting on my nerves.Look at HN's homepage, of-late, there's been too many articles on un-interesting YC startups (most of them) and worse yet, most of them, from TechCrunch. TechCrunch gets paid for featuring YC start-ups or what?

http://i.imgur.com/imXhb.png

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