A new locker system from Amazon sends your deliveries to 7-Eleven

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/02/090211-tech-technews-amazon-lockers/

by aaronbrethorst • 15 years ago

179 95 15 years ago

thedaily.com

larsberg• 15 years ago

Lucky Dragon Nanofax!

Darnit, now I have to re-read the Idoru chain of Gibson books again...

Adaptive• 15 years ago

This was absolutely the first thing I thought of the moment I read the headline.

I very much want to believe that someone at Amazon had a brainstorm after that book.

rajat• 15 years ago

How soon before state governments start claiming that these lockers are a physical presence of Amazon's retail operations?

aaronbrethorst• 15 years ago

Well, apparently the only one in existence is in Seattle (about eight blocks away from me, as it works out).

My guess is that the answer to "how soon" would be 'the second one of these boxes appears in a state where Amazon does not yet collect sales tax.'

That said, I'm guessing that Amazon's lawyers would argue that this is effectively identical to a P.O. box, and therefore totally exempted. At least, that's what I'd argue.

edit: or not owned by Amazon at all. Good call.

waterlesscloud• 15 years ago

Or the boxes are owned by a company which is not Amazon.

Make it a joint venture with UPS and use it for all kinds of deliveries and win.

kristopher• 15 years ago

Amazon already has these up and running in Japan.

Amazon Help Article (JP): http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...

Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&js...

nandemo• 15 years ago

Yes, and it has been running for several years now. Very handy.

In Japan, the customer doesn't have to mess with any lockers. In the convenience store (Lawson instead of 7 Eleven) there's an electronic terminal used for buying tickets, pre-paid cards, etc. The customer inputs the order code and key into that terminal to print a ticket. Then they hand it to the clerk who picks up the package from the storage.

mleonhard• 15 years ago

7 Eleven in Taiwan has the same system. It's a delivery option for Taiwan's big online store http://pchome.com.tw/ and Taiwan's eBay http://ruten.com.tw/.

SwellJoe10• 15 years ago

I love this idea. I travel full-time, and have no permanent residence. Amazon Prime has been a godsend...but, even that only works when I'm staying somewhere long enough to get something shipped in (I upgrade to overnight for $3.95 per item quite often), and in a place where I can have something delivered. Fedex and UPS do not yet accept GPS coordinates as a destination for delivery (my motorhome is often parked off the grid in the desert or mountains on public land). The ability to ship something to a 7-Eleven in the nearest town or along my planned route is just too wonderful to express.

I recently had to buy a new phone, somewhat urgently since my phone is my GPS/map/Internet/etc. and I'm lost without it, and was trying to figure out how to get one shipped in quickly. The one I wanted at the price I wanted to pay was not available with Amazon Prime shipping, so it was going to cost $40 to overnight it, in addition to the hassle of having to be in a specific location with a fixed address through the weekend and into next week. Luckily, a T-Mobile store had it for the same price, so I got it same day for only a few bucks more (because of sales tax)...but that's usually not the case. Had I needed an unlocked phone, or needed something not widely available, it would have been an ordeal.

In short, I don't know how many normal people are going to use this service, but I am going to use the hell out of it as soon as it is widely available.

Bluem002• 15 years ago

Perhaps slightly off topic, but I was in a similar situation recently (a replacement phone was overnighted from verizon via Fedex and my motorhome was not at an rv park). I don't know if it applies to your problem, but I discovered that many Fedex stores will allow you to use their service to ship packages to them for you to come and pick up, like general delivery for the USPS.

SwellJoe10• 15 years ago

Do you live in your rig full-time? What part of the world are you parked in now?

And, I wasn't aware I could have things shipped to a FedEx store. I've considered getting a mailbox at a FedEx store in places where I stay for more than a week or two, but so far have not. But, if I can just do a "general delivery" type thing to a FedEx store, that'd be awesome. Will look into it. Though, Amazon never tells you how they're shipping an item; could be UPS, FedEx, courier, DHL, USPS, nobody knows until you get the tracking notice. So, that probably won't work for my Amazon Prime shipments.

doctoboggan2• 15 years ago

>In short, I don't know how many normal people are going to use this service

I think many of their customers will use it simply for the anonymizing aspect. It just because significantly easier to order things online without people finding out.

jrockway• 15 years ago

Sex toys from Amazon come in the same packaging that your vitamin pills and toilet paper do. Nobody would know what you're getting unless they opened the outer box, which is something they're not allowed to do.

I kind of like this service because it doesn't involve any human interaction, which I hate. Whenever I get a package at my house, it goes to the mail room, where I have to make small talk with the package guy. Since I get something from Amazon nearly every day (yay for subscribe & save), this is awkward. Having some magical locker where I could get packages would be amazing.

biturd2• 15 years ago

Do you have a blog about your RV full time lifestyle?

SwellJoe10• 15 years ago

I do, but I rarely update it: http://nerdnomad.com (and I have http://flickr.com/photos/nerdnomad and http://twitter.com/nerdnomad which do get updated pretty regularly). Instead of blogging, I've mostly decided to write a novel instead, so I'm working on a semi-autobiographical zombie survival road novel. I'm about 36,000 words in (that's about 50 pages, I think).

With the blog I began to find it difficult to think of things I do from day to day as out of the ordinary and worth blogging about. I know it all seems strange to folks who've never done it...but, to me, it's just another day and seems unworthy of writing about. I may give it another shot eventually. I'm in Detroit right now, which is pretty interesting and is probably worth blogging about.

there• 15 years ago

I travel full-time, and have no permanent residence.

do you not file a state tax return?

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

He is still a lawful resident of the state, whether or not he has a permanent address.

SwellJoe10• 15 years ago

I don't because I am now a Texas resident, for legal purposes, and Texas has no state income tax.

But, I do still have license, registration, etc. to deal with.

ddw2• 15 years ago

I would definitely benefit from this. My UPS/FedEx pickup location is out by the airport and is usually an hour plus long ordeal that may or may not end with me getting my package.

AndyIngram• 15 years ago

I have the same problem, even with a UPS store 2 minutes away I need to call to organize the drop off at the store and pay a five dollar extra charge or its a hour and a half drive out to the depot and back.

ugh• 15 years ago

Packets are usually delivered during work hours. That’s certainly a use case. (One of the reasons why packet delivery still sucks from time to time is that you often cannot be sure that you are home when the packet is delivered.)

rdl• 15 years ago

One of the better (and easy) perks for a company to offer is really convenient, no hassle package receiving for employees. You probably already have reception and ops, so having a way personal packages and mail can be delivered comfortably to work (without inconvenience to yourself or the company) is a big win.

Palantir is an example of a company with a GREAT ops department, and they handle a lot of employee stuff. My friend is moving, and they're handling shipping some of his items separately, on top of normal moving arrangements; plus all the routine package receiving and forwarding they do.

athst• 15 years ago

This is awesome. Really good for people who live in an apartment and aren't there during the day to take deliveries.

...but what surprised me more about this was that it was shared from The Daily.

byoung2• 15 years ago

This is similar to what FedEx does with packages that can't be delivered. You can have it redirected at no charge to the nearest FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's) location and you can pick it up when it's convenient. It's like having a UPS Store box without having to pay the monthly fee.

tzs3• 15 years ago

In my experience, FedEx often redirects packages that CAN be delivered, too.

kisielk• 15 years ago

On the other hand, Purolator will happily redirect your package to the nearest Purolator depot out in the boondocks. Out by the airport or in a distant industrial park in my case... it's almost like they want you to waste your time.

tzs3• 15 years ago

    When the package is actually delivered, the
    customer receives an email notification along with
    a bar code to his smartphone and heads to the
    7-Eleven. There he’ll stand in front of the
    locker system, which looks like the offspring
    between an ATM machine and a safety deposit box.
    The machine will scan the bar code on his handset
    to receive a PIN number. He’ll punch that PIN
    number and retrieve the package.

I don't understand the purpose of the PIN. If I'm reading this right, it scans the bar code on my phone and gives me the PIN, and then I enter the PIN to get my package.

Why doesn't it just give me my package when it scans the bar code? The PIN doesn't seem to add any security.

I supposed the PIN could be an artifact of the implementation, rather than a security measure. For the prototype it might have been easier and cheaper just to use some stock keypad-based lockbox, and so they have to tell you the PIN, rather than to do some custom engineering to hook the locking system straight up to the barcode system.

sunspeck• 15 years ago

This irked me as well, and as usual when some small technical detail irks me in an article, an HN commenter has already made the complaint...

I might just chalk this one up to bad reporting instead of needless redundancy in the implementation.

sjs• 15 years ago

Maybe they didn't feel safe wiring the mechanism that physically opens the doors up to a network. If you can't access that system via the network then you definitely can't exploit it. It's the old "the only secure system is a disconnected one" mantra.

They can focus all their efforts protecting the other end.

xal• 15 years ago

Proper Security: Something you have and something you know.

tzs3• 15 years ago

Since they tell you the PIN at the point of use when you present the bar code, the PIN is not "something you know" from a security point of view.

Two factor authentication requires that you have two separate items of evidence to attest to your identity. The PIN in the Amazon system as described in the article is just evidence that you knew the bar code, not evidence as to who you are, so their system is just one factor.

A good way to think about it when considering a purported two factor system is to ask how many things a bad guy has to steal to impersonate you. In a two factor system, he should have to steal two things.

doctoboggan2• 15 years ago

I am fairly certain its because the PIN unlocks the specific box your package is in. They most likely have only one scanning kiosk and multiple lock boxes.

blahedo2• 15 years ago

I'm betting that the journalist that wrote that post garbled the message and that the PIN is an alternative to using the bar code. Some of us still don't have smart phones.

maeon3• 15 years ago

A better system might be farming out the delivery to a special service that sends a package at any hour of any day. Amazon gives the package to this agency for a fee and they will deliver it to any gps coordinate at any time (but someone has to sign for it).

mistermann• 15 years ago

This seems like a no brainer, especially partnering with a ubiquitous local retailer.

I am rarely home when the majority of the packages I order actually arrive in my city. If they were to send me an email asking me if I'll be home on the scheduled day of delivery, I'd be more than happy to let them know I'm not, to save them the trip of trying to deliver to me when I know I won't be home. This has always seemed like a major inefficiency in the courier system that I've always thought they would have eliminated. I just can't imagine that I am an outlier, do most other homes usually have someone home so its not worth sending out an email to check? Can anyone comment on this? I think about this problem every time I receive a package, it seems like such an obvious problem easily solved by technology.

acgourley• 15 years ago

Well I think for most homes they just leave the package somewhere out of sight. The packages that require a signature or the houses that have no safe place to leave a package are probably sufficiently minor so that they ignore they problem.

They should fix it, but I don't know if either of the major delivery companies are nimble enough to.

busted2• 15 years ago

Many people who work in offices just have it delivered to their office. The delivery company's routes for offices get them there during the workday.

ddw2• 15 years ago

Once I saw that a package was set to be delivered the next day so I called UPS and told them that I wouldn't be home and that they should just drop it off at the plant for me to pick up. They said they couldn't do that until the delivery guy tried at least once.

It seems easy, but perhaps it isn't or at least it isn't cost effective enough. The delivery person seemingly isn't given a route everyday (or at least that's my guess) and for now it's too complex/expensive for UPS/FedEx to institute. Also, they are rushing so much and there are so many processes before your package is put into the brown truck that there are all kinds of timing issues. This Amazon idea may help.

arghnoname• 15 years ago

Home owners should be allowed to put a bin like this at our houses that can substitute for the signature. Obviously the whole bar code etc thing isn't necessary. It could just work like old mail slots. Items can go in, but can't go out.

nostromo• 15 years ago

They could do the same for big employers too - Microsoft, Google, Boeing, etc. You could get a notification that you can pick up your delivery after work in a locker on location - all without inconveniencing a receptionist.

xyzzyz• 15 years ago

Inconveniencing a receptionist is a non-issue for big employers, since most of them already have a designated shipping and receiving department. For instance, at NVIDIA, I can have a package delivered directly to my desk, the same way that, for instance, hardware parts and development boards are delivered to me from an India location.

you_are_late• 15 years ago

In several Asian countries it's been like that for the past 10 years. Good luck US becoming modern. What else is gonna be news next, electric toilet? :D

soult2• 15 years ago

Something similar has been around in Germany for 10 years now. The boxes there are not owned by Amazon, but by the Deutsche Post AG.[0] This allows competitors to use them as well.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation

cromulent• 15 years ago

Itella in Finland have them also (SmartPost) for use by any online merchant. As a merchant, you can also use them to drop your parcels off.

kiiski• 15 years ago

Only around Helsinki it seems. Although that's not much of a problem since Matkahuolto has the next best thing already (delivery to a store nearby).

soult2• 15 years ago

The German version allows you to send packages by putting them into an empty box in the Packstation. Same for the Austrian version. Deutsche Post also maintains so-called "Paketbox"es, which are only for sending stuff.

The Österreichische Post AG (Austria) is testing a new system where they install a couple of boxes right inside apartement buildings, typically next to the residents' post boxes. When a resident isn't home they simply drop the unlock code in his post box and put the package in one of the boxes. (The package is obviously too big to be dropped directly into the resident's post box.)

Packages can be exciting ;-)

rb2k_2• 15 years ago

They english marketing page about the Packstation: http://www.dhl.de/en/paket/privatkunden/packstation.html

silvestrov• 15 years ago

In Denmark too, there is a lot of them in Copenhagen and they're adding more. Design: http://www.postdanmark.dk/cms/da-dk/images/8428-large.gif

It is cheaper to send a package to this locker than to an residential address.

You get an email and SMS whenever there is a package for you, and you have 14 days to pick up the package before it is returned to sender.

Way better than UPS, Fedex etc who seems to be completely unable to ring the door bell or who just skips delivery completely if they're busy. Of course, they are not too busy to tell the system that the customer were not home at the time.

rb2k_2• 15 years ago

There is a nice talk about the security of the packstation card.

http://vimeo.com/26025789 (audio german, slides english)

larschdk• 15 years ago

All over Denmark for a couple of years: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IlrPuze6Aps/THpLTSbhdCI/AAAAAAAACB...

eftpotrm2• 15 years ago

Hopefully coming to the UK soon. This (well, ideally a generic multi-retailer version) has been to me an obvious business opportunity for years; if I had the slightest of relevant contacts I'd have been trying to set it up. Hopefully it will take off and we'll begin to see the real possibility of online retail.

justincormack• 15 years ago

Not sure which shops. Now the supermarkets are buying up the convenience stores, and they consider Amazon competition they are not feasible.

eftpotrm2• 15 years ago

That's definitely the challenge, but the advantages of last-mile depot collections as a universal service rather than the current 'system' of waiting for the missed delivery cards then trying to find a depot 20 miles away would be a major benefit and, I suspect, one customers would pay for.

Sauce1971• 15 years ago

In Norway we them: http://www.posten.no/17889/postautomat

scorchin• 15 years ago

This is pretty cool, but my first thought after seeing this would be how easy it would make credit card fraud.

Thieves wouldn't need to provide a new address anymore, just one of these lockers and go pick it up.

gurkendoktor• 15 years ago

books.com.tw, the Taiwanese alternative to amazon, also has this feature. I bet other online shops have it too. But you can even pay your taxes at 7/11 here, so nothing really surprises me anymore :)

Loic• 15 years ago

This system is working very well. We have had that in France and Germany for the past couple of years, they call that Packstation in Germany:

http://www.dhl.de/de/paket/privatkunden/packstation.html

etaty• 15 years ago

In France it's http://www.cityssimo.fr/ I have never tested it

blahedo2• 15 years ago

> ...which looks like the offspring between an ATM machine and a safety deposit box.

The author evidently has never seen a modern transit station locker system. (Admittedly less common now that lockers have been removed from airports.) At Union Station in Chicago there is a wall of lockers that looks almost exactly like this; all your interactions with choosing and locking and unlocking a locker are done with the computer kiosk in the middle (which, in that case, has a credit card reader). Amazon is surely not using custom hardware for this (or at least, not from-scratch custom), just reprogramming what's out there.

joezydeco3• 15 years ago

You mean this one?

http://www.smartecarte.com/storage-lockers

There's a hidden aspect of these lockers, you know. TSA likes it when they can have a backdoor to these lockers when needed.

thelovelyfish• 15 years ago

That's a great idea. I hope this grows into being able to ship anything to a 7-11 and then picking it up.

warmfuzzykitten• 15 years ago

This would give Amazon a physical presence in all 50 states. Really bad idea unless they wish to start charging sales tax.

finao• 15 years ago

Sounds a lot like Kinek.com but they do it will all sorts of retailers

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

Awesome. I think my use case is common. I live in an apt where UPS can't leave packages and I am also not home during the day. I get my packages shipped to my relative's house, but I know several people who just don't order things online much because of this problem.

njharman• 15 years ago

> this nightmare scenario

Hyperbole much?

john61• 15 years ago

This problem has been solved hundred years ago. The solution is called post office. Nowadays they were getting to expensive and therefore have been replaced in Austria by post partners like gas stations, or small super markets in your neighbourhood. Works perfectly.

kragen• 15 years ago

A funny thing that's missing from this article is the payment aspect. It's my understanding that the 7-Eleven delivery system in Taiwan also handles payment — in effect, 7-Eleven acts as an escrow agent for Ruten, accepting both the goods and the cash before releasing either to the other party.

It seems like not having to use credit cards (with the attendant risks of credit card theft, identity fraud, false fraud alarms canceling your purchase, etc., not to mention cutting out people who don't have one) or PayPal could be a huge benefit. Less so for buying from Amazon, though, than for buying from eBay sellers.

A new locker system from Amazon sends your deliveries to 7-Eleven

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