Amazon has, by its own standards, one key job: Getting you the stuff you want when you want it. As a result, it’s very concerned not just with delivering packages, to the point of starting its own delivery service, but with making sure your packages don’t get stolen. Now, Amazon is looking at some, uh, unique ways to ensure you don’t lose your package.
The Verge reports Amazon is developing products that will let Amazon drivers into your home, or your car’s trunk, to drop off your packages:
The company is reportedly in talks to partner with Phrame, a maker of “smart” license plate frames that serve as a secure box for car key storage…. people could remotely unlock the box and give delivery drivers access to their car’s trunk so a package can be securely left behind.
…Amazon is developing a smart doorbell device that could give delivery drivers one-time access to a person’s home to drop off a package. This is something that’s already possible with existing smart home lock and doorbell combination systems from companies like August.
Essentially, you could give your Amazon package guy access to your home and car! Surely that will not go horribly wrong!
It’s not Amazon’s employees we see as the problem here, though, it’s the people accepting the deliveries. If you ask anybody who works in the service industry, they’re the first people blamed whenever something goes missing. Sure, there’s the occasional bad apple, but far more often, as any cleaning service or delivery guy can tell you, there’s somebody practically itching to accuse them of theft the moment a single thing disappears. Imagine what happens once that person can insist a delivery person went through their stuff.
Oh, and it’s also worth pointing out that smart locks are very much a work in progress. While we may live in a future where soon your finger or your eyeball unlocks a door, for now the tech is still in its practical infancy. Not that mechanical key locks are any safer, really, but at least somebody has to have some custom tools to breach those. Maybe Amazon should just stick to Amazon Lockers at Whole Foods.
(via The Verge)