Having used them a bunch while working at Amazon they're super nice, but not very practical for large/heavy packages because I had to get them back home. Getting one at or near my home would obviously make me order everything I could to it. It would also remove my biggest complaint about AMZL deliveries not being able to get into my freaking mailroom.

I appreciate they are trying to be more strict in their deliveries than in the past and want to try to lose fewer packages than they used to, but the tools at their disposal to handle this (versus UPS, FedEx, and USPS) are woefully under-developed. The web form to respond to delivery failures doesn't have enough options (and is very suburb focused at that), and at this point I would almost prefer a pickup location option and just pickup things from some equivalent of a UPS Store or Post Office.

Maybe they could put Amazon Lockers in Whole Foods or something?

(I guess to end somewhat on topic: the mailroom issue is precisely why Amazon Key wouldn't work for me. It seems like a far more suburban solution to the problem.)

Turns out that competitors like Target don’t like this practice, and if they have a rental agreement with the landlord that lets them place restrictions on what kinds of services will be allowed on the property, then they will use those to keep out competitors.

The only choice for Whole Foods is to put their store in, but they can’t have an Amazon Locker.

The last one that was delayed was delayed for 2 days. I contacted chat and apparently it was because they couldn't get into the mailroom and were waiting on delivery instructions.

I don't know from whom, because I was never contacted.

Both were Daily Deals, and Amazon refused to honor the sale price for replacements. Nice.

I suspect that the ultimate goal is to grant home access to their home-services pros (ie home cleaners) while you are away.

This constant lazy conspiracy theorizing every time a large company does anything is really grating.

i don't think this is lazy conspiracy... many amazon pages in the U.S. heavily promote their home services offerings so it is clearly an important initiative for them. furthermore, "amazon key" does solve a really big problem with home services: service pros typically work during the business day, but some (perhams most) of the best customers are at work during that time.

(pretty much because anyone good at doing the cleaning can just cut out the middleman)

What about the failure mode when the courier doesn't follow your parents instructions and leaves the package on the porch?

Now you have the code to the lockbox of the key to the house sitting on the porch where anyone who approaches can gain access to the house.

Personally I'd use the term "locker" to refer to a box placed outside in which to store packages.

I agree that it seem a better solution to the one scenario you're mentioning: delivering packages.

But if you watch the video in the article [1], they describe other scenarios: "maybe let in your dog walker, a friend, or maybe to let in a team of cleaning ninjas"

I don't think it's too far-fetched to see the 'friend' here being actually your airbnb guest. Many airbnb homes already use a rudimentary lockbox with code, if the guest can now instead set up something on their amazon account and know they'll be able to get in (at least the initial check-in, and have a key waiting on the coffee table), it could make the experience smoother for the guests, and the host as well.

[1] https://youtu.be/wn7DBdaUNLA?t=30s

Also how do you include the code? Address line 2? 3? Memo? I don't always see these.

I think it's just address line 2. There's a note on the porch telling them to look for the code. It doesn't always work, but it doesn't really need to. At least not where they live.

Technically as far as USPS is concerned, there are only 3 lines in an address: name, address, and city/state/zip. Address line 2/3 are non-standard and are disregarded, and you may put whatever delivery instructions in there you want.

If you have an address like "Room 321" that should go as part of Address Line 1.

However, mail is delivered by human beings and generally speaking you can get a surprising amount of mail delivered with non-standard addresses. It used to be quite common to give addresses in the form of "Red House on Easy Street at the top of the hill" and this will still usually make it through. See: "Falsehood: An address will be comprised of road names".

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907301

  Address line 2/3 are non-standard

All of my future projects will have 5 line shipping address forms.

I ended up working around it by removing all spaces from the business name in my shipping address.

The issue with that is people know if there's a package in there or not, you can't have more than one delivery service come in a single day, and you run the risk of vandals running off with your lock.

Late one night, your neighbor saunters up to your drop box and empties a bag full of dog shit into it.

  They include the combination to unlock it in the delivery address

In fact, most will contort my address to something the USPS will bounce back to the shipper if the P.O. takes its rules to the letter ("#123" gets changed to "UNIT 123", which the USPS considers invalid).

I wonder if that would be sufficient grounds for an antitrust suit if it happens.

Not following, Amazon has an option for "include key code" in their orders

Or a night safe style sliding opening in to a large metal box or in to the house through a wall.

This way the delivery person doesn't need to know a pin etc.