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Comment by Philadelphia | Hacker News Reader

Requiring a signature, as the article suggests, doesn’t help. The delivery people just ignore it. My iPhone was left outside despite requiring a signature. I changed my schedule to be home when it was delivered. They didn’t even knock on the door before they left it.

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I bought a ~$500 item from amazon the other day. They sent me a code to give to the driver to recieve the package. They told me not to give it over the phone/intercom, and to only give it in person. He tapped it into his phone before giving me the package. I suppose he needed to do so to mark the package as delivered. That seemed a reliable enough system.

Seems like a good system, but it will only work if Amazon is the one doing the final delivery…

In cases like this where it is third party (in this case FedEx), there’s no way to manage that.

How long are they required to wait? They're going to start marking it as undeliverable without knocking just to get done with the route faster.

Technical solutions always fail to solve social trust problems.

That definitely happens here in Aus, but I'd still prefer that over a brand new phone left on the verandah.

Similarly living in an apartment complex with a package locker doesn’t necessarily help. At both of the places I lived with one of those, deliveries were routinely dumped on the floor in front of the lockers, and so you’d have to watch delivery status like a hawk, hope you noticed that it was delivered quickly enough, and then awkwardly dig through a bunch of other peoples’ deliveries to retrieve yours. Had a couple of packages disappear that way.

Man, the worst is "overnight shipping" on Amazon. It's a huge nerf over normal shipping, but they push it like it's some sort of perk.

Unless you live in a detached home, "overnight shipping" just means someone's going to call you at 5:30am asking how to enter your apartment and then try again in two days when you don't pick up. One time I did this dance for a week because they kept coming at 4am, and I feel bad for them too, but c'mon "4am-8am" delivery, and they don't have Amazon Locker access?

I wish I could disable it permanently.

In some countries, delivery items require a 2FA code. I still don’t think it solves the problem as delivery drivers are stressed and this would lead to dropping stuff at alternatives like a post office or something. There’s no full solution until delivery drivers are paid a fair minimum amount.

I had a brand new laptop disappear this way. The delivery log shows a failed delivery attempt, followed by a “signed delivery” in my name 5 minutes later. Meanwhile I wasn’t even in the same state.

Never did find out what happened to it, fortunately the seller was willing to send a replacement to make it right.

I feel grateful I live in a large condo with concierge service that always receives my packages. I've never had a package stolen since moving in.

> The delivery people just ignore it.

When the compensation for stolen items starts being taken out of their pay, they will stop ignoring it.

Part of the reason they don't do that is because they're already paying the lowest the market will bear (and being able to steal items might very well be priced in by said market).

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