They usually call a monitoring centre, who then call the police, who then take a note that they were called, sit back, and have another cup of tea.
To actually get any kind of police response, you have to have a specially certified alarm system, and there have to be multiple sensors triggered... and even then, they'll take a note that they were called, sit back, and have another cup of tea.
See the recent Hatton Garden raid as a case in point.
Depends on where. When ours went off while we were out of town, the neighbors were treated not only to the horn sounding in the dark ours, but to the sight of policemen inspecting the outside with flashlights and guns in hand.
It does. I've had mine go off after I left for work because I didn't close the door soon enough. Got a call from the Minneapolis PD that it was secure, but if it happened again within a year, I could expect a fine.
Better than what happened to a friend of mine though. Her dad was a well-known doctor in a small town and let them use his house while he was on vacation. She couldn't remember the code when the alarm went off, so multiple cop cars showed up surrounding the house, police with drawn guns, etc. (he had notified them he was leaving on vacation) coming inside to arrest her and husband until she was able to convince them that she was his daughter and allowed to be there.
How many normal houses in the US have an alarm system? I cannot think of a single friend of mine who has an alarm system. Some live in Chicago, some live "in the country".
I guess I remember a friend's parent that had an alarm system, which oddly was one of the few houses I know of that was broken in to. I think the burglar cut the alarm wire on entry and got a bunch of stuff.
We do, and many of our neighbors do. We are in a fairly quiet neighborhood of Washington, DC, but there are holdups now and then, auto thefts, and burglaries.
A surprising number of them do. I lived in a house that came with one because the previous owner was a woman who often worked very late and was nervous about coming home alone at midnight. I signed up for the monitoring because it was only about $25/month and homeowner's insurance gave discounts because of it.
My uncle does, not by choice but because his house was robbed about ten years ago, and the insurance company refused to renew his policy unless he installed one.
I agree, though for high-dollar items you're usually required to be present to sign for an item. That, and your car may find itself parked in areas much seedier than where you choose to live.
Perhaps don't order items to be delivered to your boot if your car is parked somewhere seedy?
I imagine that this is more for people who park in a corporate, gated car park 5 days a week and want to get Amazon deliveries without taking a day off. My work used to take in small parcels when I worked in an office; the car-park was secure, gated with CCTV and I'd have had no problem using such a system which would require me to be on call to receive the delivery.
Personally I think lock-boxes in secure locations are probably better but there's perhaps more problems with personal security then - someone waits at the location and mugs you when you're picking up the parcel (that's not going to be so easy in an office car park).
When I lived in the city, UPS made me drive out to their depot in the suburbs to pick up a cheap white box PC because they wouldn't leave it with no one to sign for it.
However, they had no problem leaving my $900 Karastan rug propped up against the front door where it could get rained on/stolen, etc...
It sometimes seems pretty random. Going to the UPS or FedEx depot is a bit of a pain for me and every now and then I'll have to go and sign for something that in no way merits having to sign given that probably 99% of the stuff I get from Amazon just gets dropped in either my mailbox or by my front door. I think the last time I had to go to FedEx it was to pickup a broken P&S camera being returned to me as unrepairable.
Most of my packages end up on my front door, right out in the open. Putting them in my car would be less obvious and more secure. It's a nice compromise between them having access to my house (more secure for the package, but less secure for my house), and leaving the packages on the front door step.
This strikes me as a bizarre idea, to be honest - I can't imagine many being comfortable with this, particularly in Germany, which is a pretty privacy-conscious nation.
Reading the title, I thought they might be doing something genuinely interesting, by subsidising the cost of the car so long as you have a space in it which Amazon had access to which can be used for ferrying goods from X to Y based on your normal travel patterns. i.e. using personal vehicles as deadhead capacity, effectively.
Edit: Further thought. What if they're about to deliver to your car, having found it from the GPS beacon, and you decide to drive somewhere. Are they going to chase you down the autobahn, waving frantically at you?! How will they manage delivery schedules?
I can't help but think that this is a logistics nightmare.
Edit: Further further thought. What if they can't fit it in your trunk? What if you park backed up to a wall?
>Edit: Further further thought. What if they can't fit it in your trunk? What if you park backed up to a wall?
You'll probably get an email/text and would be able to pick it up at a nearby DHL store. Probably the same as if they are not able to deliver a package to your home.
Plus you know they're going to deliver something, so you end up parking thinking "the DHL person is going to drop off a box in my trunk, let's make space in the trunk and park in an easily visible area."
It's not too far from having similar to a mobile Locker service. What if you didn't have a key to your trunk, but Amazon paid you $50 a month (or a more appropriate value)? They could have a delivery carrier put goods into your trunk before you left for work, and retrieve the goods while you were busy working.
In some ways, it's also like international drug running - identify users that work in the USA and live in Canada, break into their cars, and leave illegal materials there. Then your counterpart will break into their cars while they're working, and retrieve the illegal materials.
You're exactly right that "incidental driving" would be a complicating exception. But I cling to the delusional belief that all exceptions can be handled. :)
I imagine they'd assume the exceptions are a low percentage and abort if the car starts up. Either retrying again later or retrying again the next day with a conventional carrier.
I don't see the problem with your proposed scenarios. They're ultimately equivalent to ordering a package to your house, and "what if you're not home?" The answer is, you don't get your delivery that day.
Trunk fit can easily be checked in advance, too. They know the dimensions of your trunk and the dimensions of the package, and all they have to do is check the two and only allow this service if the one is smaller than the other.
I think the main benefit is that they could easily do night-time delivery with this. Usually people have their cars parked at home during the night and they don't have to wake you when they just leave the package in your trunk.
I would imagine there is some sort of logic system that will only allow packages of a certain size to be delivered. Ie: no giant flat screen tvs being delivered to your trunk.
Interesting idea, but I think this is more of a PR stunt than a serious endeavour. As of today, the DHL / Post already offers a range of services to make sure you don't miss your delivery, most notably a system of 1.000's of so-called "Packstationen", where you can pick up your parcels 24/7 using a chip card & PIN code.
Hah! I was thinking the same thing. Being based in the US, I was very confused by what the headline meant. Even in the article, they never explain what a "boot" is.
Yes, and local authorities already have delivery services set up for them. You don't even have to place an order. Just park your car in a designated zone and wait. Amazon could learn from their efficiency!
Interesting idea. Are they saying only the Audi owner will be able to have his stuff delivered to his car? Isn't the car going to be where the driver is, most of the time?
How about being able to use your boot as anyone's dropoff point? Say you've got the car somewhere and someone needs their stuff delivered. They come by, hit an app for authentication, your boot opens, they take their stuff.
I wouldn't want to deliver anything I cared about remotely to someone else's car. The person drives away due to an emergency, forgetfulness, or malice and now I'm left trying to track down someone else's car...
Plus on the flip-side, I wouldn't want to be responsible for holding some random person's random thing. What if they never pick up their stuff, or pick up their stuff but report to amazon that their stuff wasn't in your trunk?
This works great in an ideal situation, but there's lots of room for bad things to happen.
I assume they would have build in stipulations regarding how long you attempt the delivery, under what conditions, and at which point you simply drop it off at the post office or the persons house. Maybe they don't, but I would hope they've considered it.
What about "AirBnB for package delivery." I don't have this problem (UPS will leave stuff at my house if no one is home: they'll even put stuff inside one of the vehicles if it's raining or snowing), but it strikes me that "renting" out your house for the express purpose of letting UPS/FedEx/whatever drop off a package for someone who can't get packages delivered during the day might be a useful service.
Probably can't charge much per package, but if you're OK with random people showing up at your house to get packages, it might be a useful service.
And on another note, I just saw the first TV commercial for AirBnB. How long have those been running?
It could be handy for people near the Canadian border - we have to pay a shocking amount of money to get stuff over the border most of the time, and lots of places won't even ship to Canada. It often makes online shopping not worthwhile. There are businesses dedicated to receiving goods for Canadians and moving them across the border, but the AirBNB model could also work there.
Your issue is going to be what gets shipped there. The darknet market people try to find anyway to get stuff delivered to somewhere that doesn't belong to them. This is an issue with a lot of drop shipping services.
In the '/whatever drop off a package for someone' market, I guess you can charge quite a lot, as 'whatever' will often drop of things that aren't 100% legal.
A service like that would need (self)-regulation, just as, for example, eBay and AirBnB developed after some initial bad press due to bad experiences of their buyers, respectively landlords.
This Danish startup does something like "airbnb for package delivery" but without a third party company such as UPS: http://trunkbird.com/ People bring stuff in their car if they are driving to another city.
I used to explain the problem of of DRM as giving the delivery companies the keys to your house so they can not only stow the goods right in your shelves, but also help themselves to whatever you have there. It seems like people generally like that idea.
As someone recently observed, Amazon might have finally jumped the shark. It's great to try new ideas, continually test new methods, come up with alternatives, etc. But so far none of these recent things since airprime and firephone have worked out. It's been a case of one dud after the other. Is there any reason to believe these things ate anything more than publicity stunts on Amazon's part? These new ideas are not any more serious than any senior project in hs. These are things highschoolers can think up. I expect a little more from the people who brought us online retailing, next day delivery and aws.
I don't think drone delivery belongs in the same category. That's clearly a moonshot program, where it's ridiculous and has an extremely low chance of working out, but would completely change the game if it did. The Fire phone was yet another Android phone, with a couple of gimmicky features and a price that was far too high.
This service, on the other hand, seems completely reasonable. It's easy to implement with mostly existing infrastructure. The delivery trucks and drivers are already out there, GPS-enabled connected cars are already out there, all that's needed is something that lets the delivery driver talk to the car. This could be something as simple as a QR code on the package that opens a URL that shows the car's location and has a button for opening the trunk. It's a service that's actually useful: getting packages when you work all day is an ongoing problem for a lot of people.
A brief aside: "next day delivery" is hardly an innovation of Amazon. I remember catalogs in the late 80s or early 90s which prominently advertised "same day" service if you called in your order by, say, 3AM.
How do you know these new initiatives haven't worked out?
Keep in mind that it took >5 years for Prime and AWS to take off. When they first launched, they lacked many features and no one gave a second look at them.
They're an incredibly innovative company. As an innovative company they try out lots of different ideas. Most of those ideas are going to be relegated to the dustbin. But the ones that work can turn into billion dollar businesses.
Using car boots for delivery might not work with a single manufacturer, but it might work for all manufacturers. It might also work more effectively with driverless cars. Either way it's an experiment to push the boundaries of what can make their supply chain more efficient.
R&D, PR, and not paying taxes. The weird ideas don't really have to work out for Amazon at least for now. There is also internal knowledge and data being cultivated related to these 'flops.' As someone suggested (can't recall who), sometimes a company like Apple starts developing something internally so when they do an acquisition they have a pretty good idea on the model and have an existing team to integrate with. Unlike Apple, Amazon is choosing to put these stories in the news.
"sometimes a company like Apple starts developing something internally so when they do an acquisition they have a pretty good idea on the model and have an existing team to integrate with"
OnStar has been able to unlock your car remotely for 15 years... this looks like a creative use of that system. If you disagree, you should manually disconnect the OnStar system.
Up until ~2009MY cars, if you didn't pay for OnStar, they never activated your vehicle and they would never have access.
I think it was mostly a liability / strategy decision rather than a cost one, but you can imagine people calling up and begging OnStar to start a subscription when they need it and then cancelling immediately after. Or trying to subscribe if their car was stolen to track it down..
Isn't this service incredible useless in Germany? DHL and Deutsche Post both offer a Abstellvertrag, which solves the problem sufficiently for years now.
For those who don't know: a Abstellvertrag handles the actions that need to be taken by the deliverer if nobody is home.
For example, our postman delivers our packages at home into our garage.
But seriously, which kind of person believes this is a good idea? It is obvious, that Amazon needs to track the vehicle until delivery ( with a system that may or may not be switched off, if not needed) and DHL needs a system to unlock the car. This is not a hard to explain security hole in a server that is invisible for the average person. It is granting physical access to your car to a total stranger. What could possibly go wrong?
Especially in Germany. I wonder if no one thought about the insurance companies when they thought this up. I bet they might have something to say about all this. Heck, when you sign up for insurance they want to know if your car is parked in a lockable garage or just on the side of the street. They also want to know who besides yourself will be having access/driving the car.
The last thing I as a customer would want to is pay even more for car insurance cause the added liability changes my contract.
74 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 97.5 ms ] threadThey're probably both about the same?
They usually call a monitoring centre, who then call the police, who then take a note that they were called, sit back, and have another cup of tea.
To actually get any kind of police response, you have to have a specially certified alarm system, and there have to be multiple sensors triggered... and even then, they'll take a note that they were called, sit back, and have another cup of tea.
See the recent Hatton Garden raid as a case in point.
Better than what happened to a friend of mine though. Her dad was a well-known doctor in a small town and let them use his house while he was on vacation. She couldn't remember the code when the alarm went off, so multiple cop cars showed up surrounding the house, police with drawn guns, etc. (he had notified them he was leaving on vacation) coming inside to arrest her and husband until she was able to convince them that she was his daughter and allowed to be there.
"Normal houses" very rarely have alarm systems here.
I guess I remember a friend's parent that had an alarm system, which oddly was one of the few houses I know of that was broken in to. I think the burglar cut the alarm wire on entry and got a bunch of stuff.
I imagine that this is more for people who park in a corporate, gated car park 5 days a week and want to get Amazon deliveries without taking a day off. My work used to take in small parcels when I worked in an office; the car-park was secure, gated with CCTV and I'd have had no problem using such a system which would require me to be on call to receive the delivery.
Personally I think lock-boxes in secure locations are probably better but there's perhaps more problems with personal security then - someone waits at the location and mugs you when you're picking up the parcel (that's not going to be so easy in an office car park).
When I lived in the city, UPS made me drive out to their depot in the suburbs to pick up a cheap white box PC because they wouldn't leave it with no one to sign for it.
However, they had no problem leaving my $900 Karastan rug propped up against the front door where it could get rained on/stolen, etc...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_clamp
Reading the title, I thought they might be doing something genuinely interesting, by subsidising the cost of the car so long as you have a space in it which Amazon had access to which can be used for ferrying goods from X to Y based on your normal travel patterns. i.e. using personal vehicles as deadhead capacity, effectively.
Edit: Further thought. What if they're about to deliver to your car, having found it from the GPS beacon, and you decide to drive somewhere. Are they going to chase you down the autobahn, waving frantically at you?! How will they manage delivery schedules?
I can't help but think that this is a logistics nightmare.
Edit: Further further thought. What if they can't fit it in your trunk? What if you park backed up to a wall?
You'll probably get an email/text and would be able to pick it up at a nearby DHL store. Probably the same as if they are not able to deliver a package to your home.
In some ways, it's also like international drug running - identify users that work in the USA and live in Canada, break into their cars, and leave illegal materials there. Then your counterpart will break into their cars while they're working, and retrieve the illegal materials.
You're exactly right that "incidental driving" would be a complicating exception. But I cling to the delusional belief that all exceptions can be handled. :)
Trunk fit can easily be checked in advance, too. They know the dimensions of your trunk and the dimensions of the package, and all they have to do is check the two and only allow this service if the one is smaller than the other.
The point of this scheme is to make that happen less, and also that people don't have to stay home waiting for the truck to come by as much.
Appears to be the trunk?
How about being able to use your boot as anyone's dropoff point? Say you've got the car somewhere and someone needs their stuff delivered. They come by, hit an app for authentication, your boot opens, they take their stuff.
Lots of issues, but why not?
This works great in an ideal situation, but there's lots of room for bad things to happen.
What about "AirBnB for package delivery." I don't have this problem (UPS will leave stuff at my house if no one is home: they'll even put stuff inside one of the vehicles if it's raining or snowing), but it strikes me that "renting" out your house for the express purpose of letting UPS/FedEx/whatever drop off a package for someone who can't get packages delivered during the day might be a useful service.
Probably can't charge much per package, but if you're OK with random people showing up at your house to get packages, it might be a useful service.
And on another note, I just saw the first TV commercial for AirBnB. How long have those been running?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
(See also: https://web.archive.org/web/20131221065154/https://www.buffe...)
In the '/whatever drop off a package for someone' market, I guess you can charge quite a lot, as 'whatever' will often drop of things that aren't 100% legal.
A service like that would need (self)-regulation, just as, for example, eBay and AirBnB developed after some initial bad press due to bad experiences of their buyers, respectively landlords.
So I think people are responding to you in terms of a viable service, where there is not much reason to distrust the delivery person.
This service, on the other hand, seems completely reasonable. It's easy to implement with mostly existing infrastructure. The delivery trucks and drivers are already out there, GPS-enabled connected cars are already out there, all that's needed is something that lets the delivery driver talk to the car. This could be something as simple as a QR code on the package that opens a URL that shows the car's location and has a button for opening the trunk. It's a service that's actually useful: getting packages when you work all day is an ongoing problem for a lot of people.
A brief aside: "next day delivery" is hardly an innovation of Amazon. I remember catalogs in the late 80s or early 90s which prominently advertised "same day" service if you called in your order by, say, 3AM.
Keep in mind that it took >5 years for Prime and AWS to take off. When they first launched, they lacked many features and no one gave a second look at them.
Using car boots for delivery might not work with a single manufacturer, but it might work for all manufacturers. It might also work more effectively with driverless cars. Either way it's an experiment to push the boundaries of what can make their supply chain more efficient.
Believe it or not they do that at GoDaddy too.
I think it was mostly a liability / strategy decision rather than a cost one, but you can imagine people calling up and begging OnStar to start a subscription when they need it and then cancelling immediately after. Or trying to subscribe if their car was stolen to track it down..
For those who don't know: a Abstellvertrag handles the actions that need to be taken by the deliverer if nobody is home. For example, our postman delivers our packages at home into our garage.
But seriously, which kind of person believes this is a good idea? It is obvious, that Amazon needs to track the vehicle until delivery ( with a system that may or may not be switched off, if not needed) and DHL needs a system to unlock the car. This is not a hard to explain security hole in a server that is invisible for the average person. It is granting physical access to your car to a total stranger. What could possibly go wrong?
Also, way to totally brush off the bigger news that the FAA's approved testing of Amazon's drone delivery :)