Home Delivery Box

In the USA the postal system generally delivers mail (and picks up mail) at every physical address --but this is sometimes simplified, such as in apartment buildings where a wall of mailboxes makes it easy to deliver mail to the whole building. Such a place might also have a single particular large mailbox (see link) which many people in the building can use for sending out stuff.

However, these days the postal service is not the only entity delivering stuff to people --but only official mail is legally allowed to be placed in mailboxes. Therefore many packages are left exposed and vulnerable to theft.

With the rising use of on-line sales and shipped deliveries, it is becoming common for packages to be both vulnerable and stolen, after getting delivered. Logically, we need a way to prevent that.

Recently (relative to when this Idea was written), one of the major home-delivery companies proposed obtaining house keys so that packages could be placed directly inside residences. Most folks are not comfortable with that, so we need an alternative.

Logically, a relatively simple lockbox located outside the residence could suffice. Let the shipper have a key to that, but not the key to the house.

A more sophisticated box could allow packages to be placed inside it without needing a key. See the link again! --because that style of lockbox allows anyone to put stuff inside it, but removing that stuff requires a key. However, we need a different design, since that particular design is considered to be for exclusive use of the postal system. I'll leave the type of alternate design as an exercise for the readers.