this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
411 points (98.8% liked)
Technology
59422 readers
2942 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It baffles me that "delivering" packages like this is a standard practice over there. I'm in the EU, and if I'm not home by the time the delivery is attempted, the company would call and ask when is a good time to try again, or would leave the thing to be collected at an office.
It used to be that they would not leave packages unattended at a residence, they would leave a note on the door about an attempted delivery. I suppose with the rise of online shopping things had to change. I don't see American delivery companies bothering with trying to contact you/retrying deliveries, they just want to get out as many packages as possible... and there is a LOT they have to deliver in a day.
You do have a lot of choices in how you want your items delivered depending on the delivery company. Most of the have apps/websites where you can choose to have them hold the package, or deliver it to a specific location on property. By default packages will be left at the door.
Personally I have never had a problem with porch pirates, and if a package is expensive or important I will have the delivery company hold it and pick it up there.
The seller can mandate a signature. I've had to sign for valuables like laptops, phones and ammo. (That last one was to prove I'm American.)
So it's possibly cheaper for the seller not to require a signature (since it's an extra service), but it's no biggie if the package gets stolen? Seems logical...
Well yeah, if it only gets stolen 1% of the time, and the cost of that service is more than the replacement cost when things get stolen, it makes sense to not require a signature. It's just like retail, they just factor in a certain amount of loss into the price of the items they sell.
Fair point, yeah. If it's a no-hassle process for the customer to report something as stolen and get a refund or another item shipped (even without proof - because I figure not everybody has surveillance cameras), sure.
The other thing that's quite common is to require proof of delivery. Always fun because now the delivery driver has to take an awkward photo of me holding the box.
🤣damn
Yeah, same up here in Norway. If I'm not home they will offer to leave the package at a collection point, or drop it off at my place of work. As far as I know, they're not allowed to just leave it at my door step and hope for the best.
Someone let's you these days like porter buddy
TIL I learned of porter buddy, thanks.
When I had my phone delivered it was from a special courier, not the normal post. I had to show ID in order to accept the delivery.
(EU)
In Germany you have to give permission in the tracking menu to have them drop the package off somewhere else. I live in an apartment building so I usually tell them to drop it in the hallway of the building, since there's usually someone at home to at least open the door downstairs if I'm not at home. I've seen packages outside the front door only once here and it is not a place I'd ever choose.
In my region, I see packages in front of doors in a lot places 😂 guess I live in a peaceful country.
We can even leave cars unlocked, and they don’t get stolen, but we don’t, out of fear that a kid may loosen the handbrake in play..
It's not so much a matter of the region itself, I live in a pretty decent area of my city. It's more that the houses here are all apartment buildings so in most cases the packages will get placed in the hallways instead of the front door of the building. There's just not really a need to ever have them drop it off there.
Here it gets most of the time placed where the “Briefkästen“ are, if not specified by customer, that wishes their package placed. So, sometimes in and sometimes outside. A phone would most likely be placed in the “Milchkasten” which is a place in the “Briefkasten“ emerged from a time where it was normal to get daily milk delivered. 🤔 well as far as I got told by my parents.
Don't worry, it's shit in places in the EU as well. One delivery guy just left my whole apartment complex's packages, for thousands of households, in front of one apartment.
Do they send an SMS/email to ask for feedback after that? If they do, you probably don't need hints to know what to do with it.
No, after trying to contact them for multiple days because they only left me the name of the neighbour I had it with - I don't know all 2000 of them by name - they were so gracious to give me a house number. This was a 2000 EUR laptop btw.
They also routinely pretend I'm not at home so they don't have to come up with the elevators, and I get to go on an adventure to get it from a delivery point in the city. Which is its own lovely thing, since the one nearest is a tobacco shop, and the employee there routinely pretends that the "machine is broken, come back in the afternoon" so they don't have to deal with finding my package among the others, and can dump it on the afternoon shift.
This is DHL in the NL btw.
Well — Amazon has made package delivery such a common thing that few people would have the time to be around during package delivery hours because they are at work. Few people can go home from work just to wait for a package.
TL;DR: if something not from Amazon is delivered by Amazon Spain, it's a PITA and the recipient has no control over delivery.
I recently had one delivery sub-contracted to Amazon Spain, it was a nightmare. I was not able to choose a different date (only the original delivery company could, but they didn't answer me at all), not able to choose a pick up point (for the same reason), not able to correct the address that was slightly messed up. They emailed me that the parcel is up for delivery in 10 days, and delivered it next day after the email, probably 1 and 10 are close enough.
It's a lucky thing they even called me, I was away for several more days and couldn't receive the parcel. The support said they will usually make three delivery attempts and then send back, but that they may do more or less attempts. Also they responded that I should give the seller some time to respond to my inquiry about moving delivery date, but they will continue to try to deliver and maybe fail and send back.
By the way, the original delivery company never replied at all, if I were unable to finally catch a delivery I would be out of luck. Also, the delivery window is 10 AM to 10 PM, no details, just wait and hope
I'm in the EU and I don't have to be present for anything.
My guess is that wherever they is more prevalent they would require signatures/presence.
Most of us wouldn't buy from someone who made us jump through hoops like that.
It's not really a lot of hoops to jump through, and this seems to be standard practice by DHL, UPS, FedEx and others, over here.
I actually appreciate getting the options on delivery day. E.g. I usually get to choose what collection point they leave the package at (so I can pick a spot I pass by going home from work or whatever), or if I want them to come back the next day, or have it dropped off at my office (not always an option, kinda seems to depend on how stressful a day the driver is having). I certainly prefer it to risk having the package stolen, then reporting, waiting for a new delivery..
Of course, if the package is large, heavy or otherwise unwieldy it might be a pain not having it delivered directly to the door, but if I'm expecting such a thing I try to be home to accept delivery.
Call it what you want; anyone who changed their policy would go bankrupt overnight as they lost 95% of their sales volume, because no one else does that silly nonsense.
You're free to waste time going to pick up "deliveries", and this has more or less always been the case. But that's a dealbreaker for the vast majority of the population, because no other competitor will pull that nonsense.
How inconvenient is getting your package stolen lmao
It's literally never happened to me and, if it did, is still less inconvenient than waiting for a delivery one single time. It's as simple as contacting the retailer and getting a replacement shipped in a day or two for anyone big. The worst case is maybe a week.
All of that is better than going out of my way to go to a pickup location or staying home waiting for a package.
Exactly. I've never had a package stolen, but if I did, I would just report it and it would come later that week. No big deal.
Welcome to the rest of the world mate. This issue here is another "no way to prevent this, says only nation where this happens" as The Onion would say.
OK, in the rest of the world you have dogshit service. Why is that relevant to the fact that Americans are unwilling to do business with companies that don't respect our time?
Stolen packages aren't an actual problem at any scale, and I'm willing to bet shrinkage from theft is meaningfully lower than it is in physical stores. Expecting people to sit around all day waiting for deliveries is a terrible trade off for a rounding error worth of loss to the retailer.
I would not buy from someone who used a parcel service that just dumped my stuff outside.
You're free to opt in to having your time wasted if you want.
I drive by 3 different pickup stations during my commute and there's one in walking distance from home. I invest maybe 5 minutes of my time to pick something up. For that I never risk having anything stolen, damaged or misplaced and no driver has to look for parking in my street and climb the stairs to my door.
No idea what you're doing in your precious time that that seems like such a bad investment to you. That sounds even more ridiculous when I think about how much my parent's time was "disrespected" when they had to go to a store to get their stuff.
The fact of the matter is that home delivery is not a sustainable model in a world where everybody orders so much stuff online. Drivers are overworked and underpaid, and if that were fixed you would be the first to complain about higher shipping rates.
Home delivery is not going anywhere, and like I said, even if a behemoth like Amazon tried, they would lose their entire business overnight. Not doing home delivery isn't sustainable because customers will not do business with you, and every business that tries deserves the guaranteed bankruptcy.
The world has improved. Not having packages delivered to my doorstep is as regressive as it would be to walk miles to a well with a bucket. Someone who would ask either now that there's a better way is not someone I will do business with.