[traviswingo]

True. Delivery drivers consistently deliver to my neighbor instead of myself. The last three digits of our addresses are 885 and 855, and they consistently confuse the two. They’re tired, overworked, underpaid, and I honestly don’t blame them. But I wouldn’t trust anyone in my garage/home when I’m not home. Not sure why these companies think that will actually work.

[Eisenstein]

They think it will work because if you refuse to do it they won't refund your stolen package unless you file a police report, and convenience with huge downsides wins with consumers 99% of the time over effort with no downsides.

This is just conjecture, btw, I have no authoritative knowledge of their plans to do anything.

[mindslight]

As things are, missing packages are not really a police matter for the recipient. Recipients don't actually know that a package was stolen, since it never made it into their possession. Amazon could certainly file police reports, but that requires a higher bar of evidence than throw-and-go delivery service provides, and either way it Doesn't Scale (TM).

I'd guess it's more likely the opposite dynamic, where they'll get a bunch of early adopter types to sign up without thinking through the ramifications. And then after the honeymoon period, Amazon will start demanding those users file police reports for missing packages since from their system it now looks much more airtight that the package must have been stolen from the buyer.

[dboreham]

In US homes the garage is often a way to access the house with minimal security between the two.

[fnordpiglet]

That’s not true, the garage typically has a full outdoor door with standard security (dead bolts, wired into the security system) the same as any other door as the interface door between the garage and the house. This is a code thing for a variety of reasons but primarily because the outdoor door is weatherized and provides a barrier against CO, but also for the precise reason that the garage door is not considered secure. The protocols for opening the door wirelessly are known insecure and municipalities have required outdoor doors at the interface due to the number of home invasions and burglaries through the garage.

[leeoniya]

i also keep expensive things in the garage: onewheel, a couple good bikes, a lot of nice tools. i assume this is true for quite a few homeowners.

[dheera]

Why not you and your neigbor just give your address as

Big pink house on Foo St. (#8-5-5)

or

Big red-and-yellow-striped house on Foo St. (#8-8-5)

or whatever colors they are? If they are the same color, repaint one of them.

As a bonus, this will completely throw off all the automated data brokers, idiots that use "KYC" as an excuse to want to know where you sleep, etc.

Alternatively put an apartment number on your house (there will be only one apartment, of course.)

One of you will be

855 Foo St. Apt. 1

The other will be

885 Foo St. Apt. A

[xp84]

This would work with only humans involved, but nearly everybody runs addresses through standardization now, and they would reject all of those as an incorrect address and usually require the user to enter a conforming one, including the (otherwise very clever) apartment number hack.

This is the same thing that continuously requires me to use my "ZIP+4" for absolutely everything, even though as far as i can tell, there is zero point in ever using it unless one is literally doing metered US Mail.

[seemaze]

I've got an 80% hit rate at best across all carriers (in the US). I'm constantly trading mail with my neighbors due to mis-deliveries. It's a good thing we now have the option to go mostly paperless for important documents at least..

[dharmab]

Heck, I get food misdelivered to me at times! I might as well be a last mile delivery service

[dharmab]

I use it for expensive items. My garage door opener has an integrated security camera.