Black Friday online sales were a new record in the US at $7.4 billion. Cyber Monday sales were $9.2 billion, also a new record and up 16.9% over last year. Sounds impressive until you realize that China’s Singles Day sales just last month were $60 billion. But in any case, there has been a surge in online sales led by Amazon, and now in suburban areas you see white vans driving around all the time, dropping off packages. Has anyone calculated how much gas and expense goes to the delivery of all these on line sales? But I am digressing again.
Other than the carbon footprint being created by all this delivery effort, there is another problem that has also grown along with the online buying and delivering and that is theft. In New York City alone, there are 90,000 packages stolen EACH DAY. That is up 20 percent from four years ago. Beyond that, there is the problem of a wrong address so 15 percent of all deliveries don’t reach their destination. That adds up to 1.7 million a day throughout the country. Of course the problem is not limited to just New York City. It has expanded in large cities like Denver and Washington DC. Urban areas with their concentration of delivery addresses are obviously the easier mark, but the theft has spread to suburban houses as well.
So, as theft increases, there is a number of remedies that are also on the upswing. One is a new start-up that shoppers might be willing to pay for another intermediate service that are actually package receivers located in Brooklyn. Doorbell ringers with video cameras are also on the rise. There are also special mailboxes being constructed that can accept packages. The sales companies are also tracking the packages to notify with more accuracy when they will be dropped off. The surge in package delivery has brought problems, but the solutions which always follow on a delayed basis will come and the problem will diminish.