But that can be achieved by giving the retailer a one-off access code/secret which will be handed to the delivery driver by the retailer's company?
At no point does "preventing random people in your garage" required a greedy middleman in the path between you and whoever you want to give your garage door access code.
Many people already have a keypad mounted outside that will open the garage door. You can set up a guest code there and give to Amazon, or anyone you want. There is zero need for internet-enabled smartness in the garage door opener here.
I gave amazon my code for a Christmas present that absolutely could not have been stolen from my porch (as many other recently had). As a working man, I couldn't sit at home to wait for it. I was a little nervous, but I have cameras at least. I then removed all reference to this code from my account. Then, one driver entered while I was going about my day in there and saw me waiting with a hockey stick, as I was wondering who was breaking and entering, and Amazon wrongfully told him what my code was to get in and that it was OK to go in without my permission. I quickly understood what was happening and I think he did too, so I dropped the stick and he dropped the package. No harm, no foul.
Of course, I changed my code after that, but drivers still tried to get in with my code code. I opened countless tickets with Amazon to get this reference to my code removed from their system. They gaslit me many times saying it was removed. They were incredibly rude to me when told them they were lying to me, and now I sometimes get delivery drivers getting pissed off at me (for some reason) that the code doesn't work after they ring my doorbell.
What I want people to get from this story is, don't give Amazon your code. Get a separate delivery box instead or even a storm door works to hide most packages.
> and now I sometimes get delivery drivers getting pissed off at me (for some reason) that the code doesn't work after they ring my doorbell
Since Amazon clearly has no idea what they are doing, I would put up a note next to the keypad saying “Amazon drivers: just drop the package, there is no code”
I've got this large delivery box on my porch. Right next to the door. You see it when coming up the steps. About 1/3 of the time packages are left on the porch next to the box that has inch-high letters spelling "Deliveries". The page on Amazon for "delivery instructions" changes frequently, but there's no way to put on there anything about "delivery box". At least they now come to the correct door of the house - there's a place for that.
Amazon's problem is that they outsource the delivery and there is such a terrible turn-over problem with delivery drivers (and delivery contracting companies) that nothing works at their scale.
Circa 2010-2014ish, I had the same Amazon delivery driver for several years, and it was awesome! It was just this one guy who delivered all the Amazon packages to my neighborhood. Same guy in the same truck every time, and he got to know my family and we would chat and he would help me with gardening and give me advice on how to prune my trees.
Someone else said they put a sign requesting not to ring the doorbell. No, that doesn't work. My solution was to adhere a plastic cover to my doorbell so people can no longer press the button. Problem solved - mostly.. doesn't stop people from squeezing the plastic cover lol.
As if amazon drivers read the notes. I once left a giant note saying in capital letters "DO NOT RING DOORBELL, SLEEPING BABY AT HOME" and of course the absolute knobhead from Amazon had to ring the doorbell. Literally never shouted at anyone in my life before this.
A few times I've left a very big note that says "PLEASE KNOCK LOUDLY" while sitting in my livingroom facing the door just to never see the UPS or FedEx delivery person approach but get a text message about "no one responding" so they reschedule the pickup (and I can't pick it up at the hub a few miles down the road because it's closed...). One time I chased a driver who literally just threw a note on my door (no sign like other time) and very clearly did not knock. I mean I watched them... They just walked up, box in hand, put the note on the door, and walked away. Rushing. USPS also often won't deliver small packages that fit in my mailbox because "a car was in the way" (definitely not true) despite delivering larger packages to my apartment's office the same day/time...
I'm not sure what hell these jobs are that turns drivers into such shitty people, but I feel pretty confident that it is the system turning them into shitty delivery drivers rather than exclusively shitty people applying for delivery jobs.
Probably they are getting squeezed to deliver an impossible number of packages during their shift. Hence the stories about drivers peeing in bottles and such.
It seems to be a local branch culture thing. You see it with USPS offices too.
Some are amazing, mail is delivered perfectly, etc.
Others cannot for the life of them match number to address, and it doesn't seem to matter who is delivering as the attitude spreads across the office.
I think a huge part of this is missing actionable feedback messages.
If USPS/UPS/FedEx had better channels for "my mail was screwed up" reporting, to a granularity necessary to isolate bad branches, I think things would clean themselves up.
As-is, customers learn to live with it and the mothership is unaware the branch is screwing up.
I've watched the Fedex truck pull up to my house and the guy walk up to the door and slap a sticker on it for missed delivery. Didn't even bother to bring the box, knock, or ring the bell despite my car being in the driveway.
You see, a note may not prevent amazon drivers from doing what they do, but they lose their moral ground. Now they can be shouted at if they rang a doorbell or tried to use a code for a garage door.
No more anything like this "I sometimes get delivery drivers getting pissed off at me (for some reason) that the code doesn't work. You can cut into any their speech with "English, m****r, do you read it?".
If you've ever added "delivery notes" to an order, they're automatically shared with every subsequent order. Clear out the delivery notes on your next order.
> On a side note, Amazon's interface is so much worse than Allegro
No kidding. Allegro isn't perfect, and seems to get worse every iteration, but they're miles ahead. Amazon - they're down there with eBay, worse than AliExpress. I literally only order Kindle books from Amazon, and that's only because I mastered the "google a book, switch to Kindle edition, click the 'buy with one click' button" flow, which they managed to not break just yet.
I expect it's probably cached in some downstream sub-contractor's system.
Ergo, both things can be true: Amazon cleared it on their side (customer support sees it cleared) and the delivery drivers still see it (using the subcontractor's system).
Probably because nobody at the sub-contractor's (outsourced) IT/system saw fit to implement a "As a customer, I want to change my note after initially setting it" user story.
Could you have instead changed your code? It's generally best to assume that it's not possible to delete secrets once they are shared (after all, in worst case, the driver could have just remembered the code from the previous visit)
You’ve glossed over the most complicated part of this: “give it to Amazon”. There are so many things involved in that portion of the process that an internet enabled garage door solves, most importantly: not having a single code that can be used by anybody at any point in time until I manually go back and remove it.
You still need an API for getting new codes. If you're willing to switch apps and manually generate a new code every time you order something online, you likely don't order often enough to be relevant to any e-commerce company
The problem should be inverted - use the package tracking number as code. This way, every code is unique, hard to guess, and the delivery person has it literally printed on the box. Being able to update the lock with expected tracking numbers is something that could be done simply and via local network.
This is fairly complicated to do locally and securely. If any e-commerce website/app could add tracking numbers as PINs to your smart lock via the local network, that would be a security nightmare. You'd also have to provision domains for every smart lock so that every lock can get Let's Encrypt certs and accept requests from web browsers without configuration. Not to mention most tracking numbers are easily guessable because they consist of a destination code and an auto-increment integer.
Also a lot of companies don't assign a tracking number until the package gets transferred to the last mile carrier. Again, if you're willing to manually copy-paste the tracking number after you get the shipping notification every single time you order something, you're clearly not part of the target demographic
It’s not complicated at all. I get shipment notification from Amazon, tap in, copy tracking then paste into browser interface of iot thingy. I think you might be one of those guys who types 500 lines of code when 50 will do the job.
No you don’t. I enter code into browser of iOt thingy, set to expire midnight on delivery day, copy/paste to Amazon when placing order. NBD. I could even reuse the same one over and over if I want, just enable it when a delivery is due.
Okay, but the adoption rate of "let me create a code for my packages and give it to the Amazon person" is perhaps two or three orders of magnitude lower than if Amazon shows a bunch of call-to-actions for "link your myQ account for secure deliveries".
And if Chaimberlain charges Amazon $0.50 per door opened to enable that feature (which steers buyers towards Amazon and away from the manufacturer website, Walmart/target/eBay/random competitor that doesn't have that feature) that might be a bigger, recurring, higher-margin revenue stream than all of Chaimberlain's traditional manufacturing profits. Which would you rather have - $200 revenue for a $100 cost once in 20 years, or $0.50 per week for a few packets of data?
They could afford to give away the openers if they could win that revenue stream.
And Amazon would dump them in a second if consumers could instead click "Link your Home Assistant for secure deliveries and get $0.30 digital credit". Or more likely, Amazon would throw directly wired Dash buttons at consumers to enable secure deliveries.
That sounds plausible in theory, but it's still pretty weird to me though because Home Assistant is exclusively the domain of home automation geeks. There isn't even an off-the-shelf turnkey device to get into the ecosystem, you have to know what computers are (including scary things like "operating system" and "IP address") to even get started.
I don't know what Chamberlain has to gain by sticking it to that particular demo. For HA to be a threat to the "partnerships" like Amazon, it would have to have an audience sizeable enough that Amazon would consider incentivizing adoption.
I would say it seems dumb to piss off the most passionate fans of home automation when you're a vendor of equipment that such people might want to buy, but Chamberlain has such a stranglehold on the market that I think they figure that even if they royally piss off that 5% of the garage door opener market, those suckers (or their garage door installers) will be forced to buy the gear from them anyway.
> There is zero need for internet-enabled smartness in the garage door opener here.
Yes and no. At the scale Amazon operates, I can see value in being able to automate the process rather than requiring each driver to find and operate the keypad for each garage.
Automation, if implemented perfectly (which it obviously won't be) also prevents one form of bad actor. An Amazon delivery driver who uses your code in the future to gain unauthorized access to your garage. Automation allows this code to be limited to a single use.
At no point does "preventing random people in your garage" required a greedy middleman in the path between you and whoever you want to give your garage door access code.