I actually worked with BufferBox this summer as part of my design class. They mentioned that while they and Amazon Locker were breaking new ground here in North America, this type of service is pretty old-hat in Europe. For example, DHL runs their PackStation service in Germany (and apparently in the rest of Europe too) [<a href="http://www.dhl.de/en/paket/privatkunden/packstation.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dhl.de/en/paket/privatkunden/packstation.html</a>]. There are a bunch of other fairly large and developed competitors all over Europe as well.
In Estonia we've had two-way boxes (where you can also send stuff) for a few years now. For example local eBay clone osta.ee uses it for quite convenient parcel service, as you sometimes don't really want somebody to ship to your home address.
These lockers are good, but what I think we should really improve is the quality/performance of our mailing/delivery systems. The lockers are just a patch to the existing lame systems.<p>If a company can deliver all days in a week (including weekends) and all time in a day (including evenings and nights), and the delivery men <i>really</i> called before they left a note, that company would win the game.
I always thought there were laws against running a service like this in the US. For example the rules for registering a USPS P.O. box are very stringent:<p>> To rent a PO Box, two different forms of identification are required. At least one of them must be a valid photo ID. [1]<p>This way they can actually track you down if you have something illegal shipped to the box.<p>A service like this where you can easily sign up without properly verifying your identity is just waiting to be used as a temporary drop-box for people shipping drugs from SilkRoad, people shipping goods they bought with a stolen credit card, etc.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-office_box#United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-office_box#United_States</a>
The Norwegian postal service have been offering locker facility for parcels for awhile. Mostly in train/tube stations. I dont think they have been used much.<p>While interested I never did use one when I lived there as they cost much more than a normal delivery to your door and are very limited on for how long they are stored. Useless if you are away for the weekend or week, when such a locker service would be ideal.<p><a href="http://www.posten.no/17889/postautomat" rel="nofollow">http://www.posten.no/17889/postautomat</a>
<a href="http://www.postennorge.no/nyheter-og-media/nyhetsarkiv/gamle-nyheter/nyheter?contentKey=6732" rel="nofollow">http://www.postennorge.no/nyheter-og-media/nyhetsarkiv/gamle...</a>
When someone says they had an idea first, it's almost always not true. I didn't know any similar technology but I was sure that statement was bullshit. Comments here proved me right. Just say "before them" instead of "first" and you won't end up looking like a douche (well, a smaller douche because it's still bad to cry about things like this).<p>PS: It might be that the writer came up with the word "first" as it is not cited.
Installing lockers is something that I would get into if I wasn't already involved with a company doing something very similar but not for package deliveries. Once you build out the infrastructure, you have an asset with good ROI and a moat against potential competitors. I know someone doing exactly this right now and is basically trying to expand as quickly as possible.
Same day delivery services like these have existed in Japan for years. They're wonderful.<p>But they lend themselves to low weight/high value goods that are easily shipped. And to highly concentrated population centers where the higher costs of same day shipping associated with operating a warehouse or retail store in an expensive environment can be amortized over higher margin goods.
It'll be interesting to see Amazon square off against a startup. They've been doing battle with B&M stores, Google and Apple. It'll be interesting to see how they deal with a company several orders of magnitude smaller than them. With the amplifying effect of YC behind them, it'll be interesting to watch.
What a perfect solution for peer-to-peer delivery and selling/buying stuff from craigslist! Amazon may have their lockers, but there's plenty of room for this take on use cases that Amazon wont (yet) - run fast!!! :)
this has huge potential if they do it right. Let vendors pay with bitcoin. Let them pre-ship product that can be unlocked with a qr code. suddenly the silk road gets a lot more interesting.