Creative ways to fight back against parcel pirates
The day has finally arrived. That special item you ordered is coming to your door today. Perhaps you saved up for weeks or longer, or you’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of a new product. Now, today’s the day. Your package has been on a long journey, from wherever it was manufactured to a warehouse to truck to your front door. You’ve counted the minutes until you could leave work, head home, and open your precious parcel. You get home expecting to find it on your porch, but it’s not there. Parcel pirates have run off with it.
It’s a fairly common occurrence, and a problem that is on the rise as retailers such as Amazon make more and more home deliveries. Easy solutions are to have parcels delivered to the office or to a neighbour’s, but those aren’t always practical. Some offices ban the practice for fear of being overloaded with employees’ personal deliveries. Not everyone has neighbours who are home during the day, and it is a rather large favour to ask someone to hold your parcels for you.
Smart Solutions
A visible security camera installed above the porch can serve as a deterrent to would-be parcel pirates and help retrieve stolen items and catch thieves if they are bold enough to take packages despite the camera. Ring offers a variety of home-security devices that, unlike Ring’s original concept, do not require anyone actually ringing a doorbell to activate.
There are also options to securely store your parcels, ensuring parcel pirates can’t get to them in the first place. Australia Post’s Receva is a smart mailbox that signs for deliveries and comes equipped with weatherproofing and a temperature gauge. You can even send access links so someone can empty the box if you’re on holiday and receiving a lot of parcels. Australia Post couriers have a link to gain access for delivery, and the Receva app notifies you when your package is delivered.
A drawback to Receva is that only parcels sent through Australia Post can be delivered to it. Chester, on the other hand, promises to be “the ultimate doorman,” with the ability to accept any deliveries. Chester is a wifi-enabled, battery-powered storage chest that lets users know the time a parcel arrived and its weight through an app. Users can set passcodes in the app as well. With a capacity of 125 litres, it’s large enough to hold just about any delivery.
Delivery Alternatives
A big reason parcel pirates are successful is when items are delivered. Most packages come during the day, when people are typically out of the house. Zoom2U is an express courier service that delivers outside of regular business hours so customers can be home when their deliveries arrive. Zoom2U offers a variety of options, including VIP delivery that has the very next available courier deliver your parcel for maximum speed. Interstate delivery puts packages on the next available flight and gets them there by that afternoon or the next morning.
Australia Post has parcel lockers at more than 280 locations nationwide, and with the Safe Drop feature, you can reroute packages to a more convenient address up until the time they are out for delivery. If you didn’t change the address in time, you have up until an hour before delivery to ask the courier to leave the parcel in a designated safe place and send you a picture of it.
Every parcel sent with Sendle includes insurance, and it employs a large support team to ensure easy access to detailed advice should something go awry. Sendle also offers the option of not leaving a parcel and delivering it at a more convenient time.
With so many options available, customers and retailers now have the power to stop parcel pirates once and for all.
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