Yesterday, Mrs. J. went to the front door, looked out at the porch and exclaimed, “It’s stolen!”.
I naturally figured that someone had walked off with a package she ordered, but it turned out she was referring to arrival of the Xmas stollen (pastry) we had purchased online.
That’s all I’ve got.
How does this help? Don’t your packages just get taken from your neighbor’s porch, and theirs likewise lifted from yours? I mean, I never heard of a porch pirate checking the address label. “Whoops, this package is addressed to the Smiths at 123 Main Street, and I’m here at the Jones at 125 Main Street. I won’t steal this misdelivered package!”
I assume the difference there is the neighbor is always home & retrieves them from the porch instantly so they can’t be stolen whereas our poster is home rarely and packages may sit there for hours or days.
They get it delivered to whomever is home that day
The point isn’t to buy and install them at your home. The point is to buy them intending for the porch pirate to steal them and receive a surprise later at their home.
In addition to buying e.g. bees from e.g. Amazon this method could also work. Just ship it to yourself and wait for the fun when someone pirates it.
So she sounded drunk. 
So what about blue dye packs like the banks use? Should be easy to spot the Smurf casing people’s houses.
Yes, our chances double, since only one of us has to be in for the parcel to be taken inside safely.
Huh. With you and neighbor swapping addresses, I figured that meant s/he was also likely to be out. And how can you know at the time of ordering, what day the package will come and thus you can’t know which is the best address to use? At least, IMrelativelysmallE, regardkess if what the email notification says, packages will come days early or late on the whims of the gods.
Or can you give instructions to ‘leave the package either here or there’ to the delivery guy? I’ve never tried that. There’s a store that accepts UPS (etc.) deliveries for a small fee pretty close by, I just use them by default.
I order from Amazon (I have Prime) four of five times per month and have done so for many years. I think I have had two things ever lost entirely and maybe one or two times a year have something arrive late where they do the “oops” notification at the end of the day. I can’t recall ever getting something prior to the promised day.
There is a feature to change the delivery instructions. I’ve seen it but never used it so I can’t speak about how well it works.
What’s happened to me, a few times, is that Amazon will send a message saying, “this package is delayed – we’d originally said it’ll arrive on Tuesday, but now it won’t arrive until Thursday”…and then it shows up on Tuesday anyway.
Happens to me occasionally. The most recent instance was yesterday.
Amazon UK has options for what happens if I’m out:
Happens to me the vast majority of the time, usually one to two days sooner than promised. But I’m not on Prime and I use “free delivery” which is the slowest. But still, it’s typically something like four-day delivery promised and it arrives in three, always using Amazon’s own delivery service.
That’s the difference. I get stuff the next day if I order by late afternoon-ish or the day after if I order at night for nearly everything. Some third part stuff takes longer but still on time for when they promised.
I wish! I sit about 10 feet away from the front door and often don’t hear them set down a package. The alert I get from Amazon telling me it was delivered sometimes comes awhile later, not soon enough for any crooks who follow behind the delivery drivers. Fortunately, my block almost never gets hit anymore - no idea why not.
I have had 2 different drivers tell me that a giant spider next to the front door freaked them out. I haven’t seen any myself.
Also, for anyone who thinks a Ring camera is a deterrent, Nextdoor is chock full of Ring pics of porch pirates blithely walking off with packages.
Nothing deters a motivated thief, really.
But at least you have video to show it was stolen.
Yes the Amazon “deliver on a specific day” works. I’ve used it.
That seems doubtful.
Google “dog pelt for sale,” though…
I used to have my Amazon orders delivered to an Amazon Locker location at a nearby supermarket but a couple of years ago, my apartment building installed an Amazon Hub locker in the lobby. Aside from being more convenient, the advantage of the Amazon Hub locker is that it can be used for deliveries by Fedex, UPS or USPS in addition to Amazon.
Another problem with traps that look like boxes: more and more thieves are following the trucks around and striking soon after the delivery, presumably to get the package before the recipient gets any sort of indication that it arrived (and, for some reason, they don’t ring the doorbell - neither does anybody else delivering a package, whether it’s USPS, UPS, or FedEx), but I wouldn’t be surprised if making sure it’s not a trap had something to do with it as well.