About a year or so ago, while shopping on Amazon, I first saw a delivery option of "Amazon Locker," or for the rest of this post, "AL" for short. If you've ever heard of the term "porch pirate," you'll know that this no-additional-cost service was designed to combat just that. I don't think I have to worry about this personally because of the character of the neighborhood I live in, but I imagine there are quite a few people to which this happens all too frequently (thank you, oh so much, Mark Rober). (OK, OK...I'll admit, crime can happen anywhere, so no neighborhood is totally safe or free of it.) There's quite a few things that I have ordered that make me worry about someone coming along and just helping themselves to it, not to mention leaving cardboard boxes out in the rain (which is another problem AL solves).
With Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, that was a natural choice for one of my area's first ALs. It is really nice and fairly well secured (6 digit code required for retrieval). I have retrieved many an item from there over the past months, but going to Whole Foods is kind of out of my way. So imagine my surprise when I was wandering through Rite Aid on my way home from my employer's office looking for something to treat my nascent cold and I see an Amazon logo.
What's more, there was a label "Aldo" on it. Aldo. Why "Aldo" of all things? This is the really smart part: it looks like newer ALs have names. Amazon is thinking I'll do exactly what I did, seeing a new (to me) AL, go home and search for it on Amazon's site. When I did, I could correlate the name seen in person on the Locker with the one on the Web site. And that's a good thing too. I would have guessed Rite Aid's address to be on Sheridan Dr. Since it turns out it's actually on Evans St., I would have been looking for "Sheridan" in the listing of search results for ZIP code 14221. But there it is in the list: "Amazon Hub Locker - Aldo". Also in the listing is Karriem, Langu, Minerva, and Aliva. I don't know what the variety of names that they use is, but if each has a unique name, all the better. As well, consider that for my part of the world, these names are not common, but they look enough like names for them to be at least a little memorable. You're not wondering, was the name I saw John? Nancy? Bob? Sally? Greg? Diane? Mike? Darlene? No, at least for me it's esoteric, so possibly more memorable.
But alas, as you might imagine, there are some minor downsides. For
one, there are limitations on the size of things that will ship there,
which you will find at checkout time. Certain classes of goods (hazardous materials, shipped from other countries, etc.)
cannot be shipped to one. Sometimes at the time of your order, it will
be predicted that there will be no more locker space left. You're
automatically limited by the hours of the retailer, but in Rite Aid's
case, that's 0800 to 2100, quite a wide range indeed. You have 3 days
to pick up, after which time your order goes back. At least at my Whole
Foods, I've never gotten the barcode on an iPhone or 8" Android tablet
to work. But all these niggles pale in comparison to the assurance that stuff will not be setting in my driveway, open to anyone who might see it and be inclined to help themselves, as well as generally being guaranteed the boxes will not be soggy. (well...you never know due to package leaks, flooding, overhead plumbing gone wrong, etc.)
I hope as many businesses as possible strike deals with Amazon for these alternate pickup arrangements (looks like they also have "Amazon Hub Counter," which as it sounds, you pick up from a person instead of just electronically unlocking a locker). Then it won't matter much where I'm going, there will be one close by. The businesses can benefit too. Like Rite Aid, put it far from the entrance, and you now have potential customers seeing your wares as they go to pick up their Amazon stuff. There's still those impulse buys that will happen, even if it's cheaper on Amazon :-).
English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when the speaker or writer chooses not to follow those rules.
"Jeopardy!" replies and randomcaps really suck!