‘Porch pirates’ stole an estimated 260M packages in 2021
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Call them a "thief".
And, yes, some thief stole something from my porch 2 weeks ago. I asked Amazon to deliver it on a Thursday when I knew I would be home to get the package. It was delivered on Monday instead. Guess who wasn't home to get the package? Yes, I got a refund, which I'm thankful for, but it was still a huge inconvenience for me and it took money out of someone's pocket!
Thief. Not a "porch pirate". Thief.
What's annoying is that Amazon has started delivering with their own companies; it is relatively easy to tell UPS/FedEx/USPS to mark your address as "always signature/handoff required" and they'll not deliver if they can't contact you - the smaller companies are hit and miss.
Thief has more emotional impact than “porch pirate”.
For example some people want to redefine rape to include sex you regret, and violence to include saying naughty things.
The poster is objecting to the cutesy alliterative framing of theft as "haha, porch pirates gotchya!" Porch pirate sounds much more innocuous than "Someone stole from my property."
There is no International Thief Day.
No one has ever argued it's not blatant theft. "Porch pirate" adds precision missing from the general term "thief." I immediately knew what this article was about just from the title.
"Porch" indicates exactly the form of theft: unattended packages in front of people's residence.
I'm really confused why the term is bothering people?
"Detroit woman says her ENTIRE front porch was stolen right off her house"
ref: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9207915/Woman-Detro...
I think it's adjacent to "Stop Liking What I Don't Like". Maybe like: 'Stop Not-Demonizing What Makes Me Angry'.
There are still modern day pirates on water, but that is not what comes to mind to most people when they hear the term pirate.
Today, people think of the antihero, from Jack Sparrow to Long John Silver (Treasure Island, or the restaurant, your pick). They are fun and engaging, clever and witty. They are fighting back against an unjust government. They are even likable, even when they aren't "good" (Captain Hook of Peter Pan).
In addition, the term pirate is often used for copying software or something else digital. It, however, is a victimless crime, in that nothing is actually "taken" from anyone, it is merely that additional money is not given from the pirate to the copyright holder.
Your cute niece and nephew dress up like pirates. Pirates have buried treasure for us to find (so they actually benefit someone, so to speak). They are the very definition of adventure!
This is different. These are not people engaging in a victimless crime. These are not people fighting an unjust cause. These are not just people having fun. These are thieves. Public perception is one way to fight them, so I encourage people not to call them "porch pirates". They are thieves. They may be thieves who steal packages from porches, but they are undoubtedly still a thief. I don't care if you call them blue-hatted, striped-sock, ding-dong-ditch, grinch flunkie thieves, so long as you identify the crime for which they should be rightly ashamed and castigated. They are a thief.
No. It does not. “Pirate” brings with it a “disney like” connotation of someone all nimbly bimbly just living a pirate’s life…
A thief, which is what these people are, is the proper term.
The use of “porch pirate” brings in the clicks, though…
The same goes for stealing. They'll call it justice, or liberating, getting paid, payback, whatever. They don't like the word "stealing".
Usually, they'll stop bragging to me about thieving and stealing after that.
Personally, I’d like to see a few things.
Police actually patrolling rather than sitting on the major street a few blocks away pulling people over for minor infractions.
Police taking any actions whatsoever when reported such as using the video and license plate to follow-up would be nice as well. Contrary to what is oft repeated, they do get prosecuted around here.
I’d also like to see companies like Amazon, have their drivers actually respect the preferences that you can set such as delivering packages to a side/back door or to a certain place that’s less visible. Despite having my preferences set with every service, I’ve still come home to find packages on the very edge of the steps or front porch where they’re visible from the end of the street. When I lived in an apartment packages were left outside the door sometimes even though drivers had an entry code.
The USPS workers are the only ones that seems to somewhat consistently care and one guy even knocked and checked on me personally when he noticed I hadn’t gotten my mail in several days (just forgot).
Shippers end up eating the cost of these packages, and they are making an economic tradeoff: Slower deliveries by following preferences vs. eating the cost of loss. They are choosing the latter. Maybe they haven't done the analysis right, or maybe the overall costs really are lower that way.
It may be easy for FedEx and Amazon to just have insurance cover it. But it's easiest for me to just stop ordering anything from them.
You get what you pay for.
If this becomes endemic in areas, things like lockers will start to appear; someone's paying for all this (perhaps this is why Amazon promotes the Amazon lockers so much in some areas).
When I was growing up, you'd regularly see similar. Neighborhoods were more robust socially, and there was actually time in the day for the mailman to stop for a 3 minute chat every block with the old ladies.
These days talk to any delivery driver (friends and family have been for USPS, Amazon, and Fedex) and they'll laugh at this suggestion. They get mere seconds per drop most on most routes.
The small fraction of packages stolen evidently ends up being cheaper than paying more delivery drivers. Especially since I suspect at least a fraction of this "cost of doing business" is fobbed off directly on consumers by refusing/making it hard to get a refund in some cases.
I like the US version better, but it needs to be paired with a severe penalty for theft.
Add this to the list of obvious things that should have been invented by now but haven't:
Smart Mailboxes, that automatically scan packages and letters and confirm delivery and also notify the recipient.
I'm a firm believer that the burden of "not stealing" should largely be placed on thieves rather than everyone else. Society simply doesn't collect enough data to make that possible yet.
People don't bother because they know that law enforcement rarely does anything about it. San Jose, CA a couple years ago had someone catching porch thieves on video yet SJPD said they wouldn't pursue the matter further. Not surprising considering how low the penalties can be, if the DA even moves to prosecute.
I'm in Sacramento, which is now #5 on the list, and while there are organized theft rings that will basically follow delivery trucks, many of the package thefts here are done by the homeless. Due to rising thefts, the Amazon Lockers have been a great thing to have.
This way porch thefts must take the action of looking into something, and possibly be disappointed, if empty. I'm curious if that specific action would change the thieves' mental process, along the lines of "out of sight, out of mind".
Also heavy enough to not blow away in the wind, but light enough for inexpensive delivery. Perhaps with IKEA-like assembly, and a compartment in the bottom for gravel or dirt.
When I still lived in an apartment complex it was a struggle to get drivers to use the package lockers in the mailroom. Fairly often you'd go down there to find a big pile of packages that you'd have to rummage through, which drove me nuts because I hate messing with others peoples' mail.
My local UPS has no problem leaving things on the steps (nothing has ever gone missing) but FedEx always backs down my (shortish) driveway and tries to hide it behind a trash can.
Even assuming the trash can above was somehow porch pirate secure, you're looking at 10.4 billion dollars to outfit each house with one, interestingly enough.
Sometimes a lot of easy and cheap solutions are better than a few expensive but closer to perfect solutions.
At least what I like with the amazonization of society is that most packages are close to worthless to fence.
That big Amazon box might just be toilet paper. The small one might just be hot sauce. That wasn’t a thing 20 years ago.
It's by no means isolated to such places. The rural area I grew up in out east has seen increasing problems with theft in general, packages included. It was very unlikely there as a kid in the 90s — people left their doors unlocked all the time — but these days you not only need to keep your doors locked but make sure it never looks like your house is unoccupied for longer than a couple of days.
I have never had any problems with porch thievery. Going so far as to have my pc-build parts delivered when I wasn't home. No big deal, just $4k worth of stuff on my doorstep.
Density of those is very high, so you'll have one in walking distance unless you're living in some backwater. Then you'll have one in 5 minute driving distance.