If they just went, "We'll do our best, but if anything goes horribly wrong you're fucked, sign here," then whatever. I wouldn't sign up for it anyway, but at least they'd be honest.
But to say that they will "correct the problem" if anything goes wrong, but force you into binding arbitration, is just wrong.
Most companies will take as much as you give them. Seems like an easy win in this customer demographic
The only reason not to lie would be real negative consequences, and those don't happen so much in the fake news era.
I bet their designers thought this through and while I think your "cool computer vision project" argument still stands, I believe the real reason is that everyone who owns/rents living space actually has a front door with space for packets behind said door.
My point is that the way to fix the stated problem is with a lock box and for people who that doesn't work it's a cost of business (as it is now). But if you bring that number down to 2b instead of 7 with a one time cost of lockboxes, you've solved the stated problem.
What they have now is, I think, a choice some people might still make given the trade-off: is Amazon more likely to abuse the key you give them? or are your packages more likely to get stolen off the porch? I've lived in neighborhoods where that cost-benefit would make total sense.
an amazon locker on my front
porch, that would solve the
problem for everyone
You can't charge for the box upfront without killing customer acquisition - most companies give new customers a discount, not a charge - and if you give the box away, you're $50+ in the hole for a customer who may never shop with you again, and you've got to charge more to recoup the costs of the box.
At $50/box, I can outfit 20 million homes for 1 billion which is a 1x cost. If they are really loosing 7b on package theft every year, the one off loss of box cost should start offsetting that right away. A quick google shows that there are 90 million prime members in 2017, so they could do a box per prime member and pay it off in 9 mo. The second year they just save 7 billion. Am I missing something?
I mean, Maybe I'm just an old man and you should get off my lawn but jesus, what could possibly go wrong here? You give it away willingly then expect there to be no abuse? Why would they give you the right to sue? You just gave them a key to your house and they assume you'll accept any licence because you're so desperate for the convenience that you won't say no anyway.
If they wanted to install an amazon locker on my front porch, that would solve the problem for everyone. But that's not a cool project to work on with computer vision so . . ..