They’ve just announced Amazon Key. This is a new service that means Amazon will just open your front door and drop off your deliveries when you’re out. Or maybe even if you’re in and can’t hear the doorbell or asleep.
Amazon Key will be available on November 8th in 37 US cities and surrounding areas with more locations rolling out over time. Delivery is available on tens of millions of items sold on Amazon.com and the delivery is available at no extra cost for Prime members. Once set-up is complete, receiving in-home delivery is as simple as a click: customers select “in-home” while shopping and Amazon handles the rest. No passcodes, no fuss.
“Amazon Key gives customers peace of mind knowing their orders have been safely delivered to their homes and are waiting for them when they walk through their doors,” said Peter Larsen, Vice President of Delivery Technology, Amazon. “Now, Prime members can select in-home delivery and conveniently see their packages being delivered right from their mobile phones.”
The blurb says: “Amazon Key allows customers to have their packages securely delivered inside their home without having to be there. Using the Amazon Key app, customers stay in control and can track their delivery with real-time notifications, watch the delivery happening live or review a video of the delivery after it is complete.”
In this video Amazon explains the benefits of Amazon Key:
To mitigate the fears you might have about letting any Amazon Tom, Dick and Sally just popping in through the porch and dropping a delivery, they’ve tempered this news with an Alexa development they’re calling Amazon Cloud Cam. You can read more about that here. It means you can use your phone to see who is coming and going through your front door via Alexa.
That should give users a certain amount of piece of mind, but would you let Amazon people enter your home?
4 Responses
What the hell? Yeah like we are all going to do this. What happens if they dont close the door properly on the way out and you get robbed…. Who pays? What if you have an alarm system, a dog……. Gee things must be getting desperate!
Awesome, now hackers can literally walk into your home.
Phishing attacks just moved IRL.
My insurance would not cover theft or (accidental or deliberate) damage when I had to tell them I let in random people – if this catches on imagine the extra premiums you’d have to pay?!