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Comment by jethro_tell | Hacker News Reader

>You want me to believe that you'll protect my most valuable asset after I give you free access to it

I mean, Maybe I'm just an old man and you should get off my lawn but jesus, what could possibly go wrong here? You give it away willingly then expect there to be no abuse? Why would they give you the right to sue? You just gave them a key to your house and they assume you'll accept any licence because you're so desperate for the convenience that you won't say no anyway.

If they wanted to install an amazon locker on my front porch, that would solve the problem for everyone. But that's not a cool project to work on with computer vision so . . ..

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Why wouldn't I expect them to correct any abuse, when they explicitly state that they will do so?

If they just went, "We'll do our best, but if anything goes horribly wrong you're fucked, sign here," then whatever. I wouldn't sign up for it anyway, but at least they'd be honest.

But to say that they will "correct the problem" if anything goes wrong, but force you into binding arbitration, is just wrong.

Yeah, I'm just saying, you just gave them a key to your house, which is probably a mistake, and you'll probably sign the arbitration clause because why wouldn't you make two mistakes for ultimate convenience?

Most companies will take as much as you give them. Seems like an easy win in this customer demographic

Giving someone a key to your house is quite different from signing a contract with a binding arbitration clause. The former is an indication that you trust the key holder or the safeguards that are in place. The latter is signing away a legal right, which should carry much more weight.

But it won't, because the same people who will give away a key to their hows will give away their legal rights as well. Probably the company knows that.

I hate that we’re at a place where you now have to assume every business is lying to you every time their lips are moving/they communicate. How did we get here?

Market optimization. Mistaken beliefs are arbitrageable.

A combination of "buyer beware", inadequate consumer advocacy, bought legislators, and a lack of competition.

The only reason not to lie would be real negative consequences, and those don't happen so much in the fake news era.

I generally agree with you, but you imply everyone has a front porch let alone owns space in front of their home door which they're allowed to use for permanent installations.

I bet their designers thought this through and while I think your "cool computer vision project" argument still stands, I believe the real reason is that everyone who owns/rents living space actually has a front door with space for packets behind said door.

I think the real reason is they probably want access to your house for other services and to differentiate their own delivery because USPS isn't going to do this.

My point is that the way to fix the stated problem is with a lock box and for people who that doesn't work it's a cost of business (as it is now). But if you bring that number down to 2b instead of 7 with a one time cost of lockboxes, you've solved the stated problem.

It's pretty obnoxious that USPS regulations have discouraged innovation in home delivery arrangements. Even so, a sufficiently determined homeowner with the right setup could definitely build her own auto-emptying locker (i.e. closing the front door would open a trapdoor package chute) and post a sign directing parcel delivery to it. We don't have to wait on AMZN if this is really a thing that we need.

Amazon Locker on the porch is one solution, but as others have pointed out it won't work for everyone and it's also not scalable for all deliveries the way some other general solutions for delivery people might be.

What they have now is, I think, a choice some people might still make given the trade-off: is Amazon more likely to abuse the key you give them? or are your packages more likely to get stolen off the porch? I've lived in neighborhoods where that cost-benefit would make total sense.

  an amazon locker on my front
  porch, that would solve the
  problem for everyone

The problem with delivery boxes is the time of the cost.

You can't charge for the box upfront without killing customer acquisition - most companies give new customers a discount, not a charge - and if you give the box away, you're $50+ in the hole for a customer who may never shop with you again, and you've got to charge more to recoup the costs of the box.

I think the subset of people who would have a box installed and never use prime again and the people who would give away a key to their house for 1 delivery is pretty small.

At $50/box, I can outfit 20 million homes for 1 billion which is a 1x cost. If they are really loosing 7b on package theft every year, the one off loss of box cost should start offsetting that right away. A quick google shows that there are 90 million prime members in 2017, so they could do a box per prime member and pay it off in 9 mo. The second year they just save 7 billion. Am I missing something?

Amazon is charging $249 (plus installation costs) for the Amazon Key In-home Kit, which includes the smart lock and cloud camera. That’s more then the cost of a bolted-down box with a smart lock. The reason Amazon prefers this is described in the video. For Amazon this is a literal “foot in the door” and a path to selling you other services like cleaning and dog-walking. It’s not just about delivering packages.

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