
BufferBox (YC S12) Solves The Problem Of Missing Packages - dko
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/16/sorry-we-missed-you-yc-backed-bufferbox-solves-the-problem-of-missing-packages/
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thesash
I'm starting to notice a trend with this latest YC class-- lots of unsexy
products addressing really specific pain points.

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samstave
Agreed. While I can't see myself needing this service any time soon, clearly
it's a problem big enough to build out physical infrastructure to solve.

If the buffer box company had closer relationships with amazon's distribution
and that other company that wants to do any deliveries in an hour, there could
be an interesting market in the future.

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thesash
Tons of opportunity to disrupt an old industry which has remained largely
unchanged since the advent of the internet

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tobias3
DHL has those in Germany. In fact over 2400.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation> I'm an avid and happy user. Of
course something like BufferBox would have been better, but I understand that
investment does make a lot more sense as a parcel delivery service, as you
bind customers to you. I hope they break up that monopoly at some point.

The question is why nobody did something like this before BufferBox in the US?
Normally we are the less innovative ones :)

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maratd
> The question is why nobody did something like this before BufferBox in the
> US?

Because there is a post office in almost every US town with postal mailboxes
available? You can use that to have all USPS packages and mail delivered.

There are also UPS Stores, Fedex Kinkos, 7-Elevens, etc. which offer the same
service, plus allow from delivery from private carriers.

On top of that, for 99% of Americans, having your package dropped off at your
door is just fine. Nobody is going to take it. And if you're that paranoid,
just have it delivered to your neighbor or to your office.

I really don't understand what void this product is trying to fill.

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kineticflow
>On top of that, for 99% of Americans, having your package dropped off at your
door is just fine.

You really can't pull numbers out of a hat like that. How many people live in
an apartment with no front doorman, or requires a buzz code to get in?
Probably more than 1% of Americans.

Or what if you ordered a shiny new laptop from Amazon? Would you leave it at
your front door, even if you live in a safe area? I personally wouldn't.

Plus, These guys started in Canada, it's unfair to judge from purely American
point of view.

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amalcon
I've been waiting so long for something like this.

The second this shows up in Boston, I can personally guarantee half a dozen
users without even bothering to survey. My building has a huge stolen package
problem, due to the front door facing a main road, and the UPS driver for our
area being an idiot. My last building had a driver who never left anything if
you weren't home. While that's better than theft, it's still annoying to take
two buses and walk ten minutes to pick up a package by hand. And then walk ten
more minutes and take two more buses to carry the thing home. The whole
process usually took upwards of two hours.

My only concern is getting the drivers to actually use these things correctly.
I've found multiple packages addressed to me left outside the front door,
despite explicit instructions not to do that both given by the shipper and
posted on the door. Each of these packages were apparently signed for... just
not by anyone who lives here. So yeah, getting the driver to follow
instructions isn't going to be easy.

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ars
Is there a post office near you?

Have the packages delivered to "<Your name> General Delivery" at the post
office, then pick them up with a photo ID. (But check with the post office
first, only the larger/central post offices support this.)

It's best if you can ship it USPS. UPS will sometimes deliver to a post office
(if you put in the address of the post office), but not always.

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kazevedo
We've watched this team expand their footprint and execute on a complex
hardware product in a very short amount of time. Package logistics is a huge
problem to solve, but if anyone can do it, they can. Congrats guys!

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mmccauley
Huge thanks!! Appreciate the support.

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nchlswu
Just curious, how have you guys been doing YC? How many have gone to the US vs
stay at the homebase?

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nchlswu
As a user of the service since it was in its MVP stage, I really like the
service and I'm excited to see them grow.

To hear that they have a big vision is great. Partnerships with retailers is
one thing, but the potential for them to make key innovations on the
logistical side of things is huge. I think they can make some big moves in
this space (outside of boxes).

I'm curious how they'll address the "only ship to billing addresses" problem?

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rodly
What if the package doesn't fit in any of the available compartments? Does the
customer get notified they're package is about to arrive in X (hours, minutes,
etc)? This could lead to an angry customer who decided to plan their day
around retrieving said package at the estimated arrival time and they find out
it's not there?

For select distributors, the customer gets to use BB for 'free'. How is this
possible? Doesn't that mean those distributors are increasing the cost of
shipping to pay BB for using your storage boxes? Why would a distributor want
to use BB rather than the current individual shipping locations model?

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agotterer
Also: How does the parcel service get into the locker? Are the lockers inside
a retail store front or more like a vending machine that could be (outside)
anywhere?

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nchlswu
Packages are sent to a "central" BufferBox address and BB staff fills the
locker

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ShabbyDoo
So, should BufferBox pay 7-Eleven, or should the money transfer in the other
direction? On one hand, the BufferBox takes up valuable floorspace, especially
in the urban markets most likely to be BufferBox's bread and butter. On the
other hand, effectively guaranteeing 20+ people walking through the front
doors of a store every day certainly has value. What percentage of people
receiving packages will realize while walking past the refrigerator case that
they have no beer in their fridge?

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crazygringo
It sounds great.

But will USPS deliver to one of these? Are they even legally allowed to? Or
are you limited to private shippers like UPS, FedEx, etc.?

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solox3
Yes. They are addressed boxes, but are not PO boxes (for some reason).

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maxerickson
They aren't located inside of post offices.

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K2h
I think this is kind of a portable PO box, or PO box you can franchise. It
seems there are things moving to kiosk despensers like redbox, blockbuster,
even those change counting machines in the supermarket!

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stcredzero
So, if your corporate records are stored in a kiosk box, doesn't that mean
that you can set up your company's address there?

Could one use this sort of thing to convert any café into a co-working outfit?

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samstave
Also, can I drop a package in one bufferbox and have it delivered to another?

You want to borrow my snowboarding helmet, goggles and gloves. I drop them in
my box, select a destination, and buffer box teleports them to your box.
Reverse the process when your done with it. Also, I let it be COD - meaning
that you, the borrower, pay for the round trip buffer transfer cost.

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rmc
You mean like a post box?

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samstave
I have never seen this process work with a post box. Please package in box
SFO-03-01-AA and select it to be delivered to NYC-12-02-AC.

While the logistical process is the same, its much more like an inter-office
mailstop than it is a post box.

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scottnyc
I really like this idea. As someone who doesn't have an office to send
packages to or a doorman, I will use it.

I'm actually interested in seeing how they'll address utilization if it gets
popular. What if 100% of the spaces are taken, and someone decides to wait a
few days to pick up their package. Is there a penalty fee to prevent such
behavior?

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samstave
They need a "have bike messenger deliver my box to me" button. A box-buffer-
biker if you will.

Again, seeing how kozmo.com was 10 years ahead of its time!

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ifmw
These are very useful. Here in Ireland that service already exists as
ParcelMotel.

As someone who has used ParcelMotel, I can't help but notice the differences
between the things I love about the PM site that aren't on the BufferBox site.
BB use uninspiring stock images but PM have commissioned an entire set of
custom artwork that's a strong brand and very cutsey and describes their
service using metaphors.

PM are very explicit about the pricing. It takes up a big chunk of their
homepage. After several minutes I still can't find how much bufferbox costs!

And do BB only email out the PIN? Surely sending it to everyone by SMS would
be a better idea?

The product is a great idea and it's implemented so well through different
companies here in Europe. It's good to see something similar starting off over
there also.

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hboon
It's interesting that ParcelMotel's site blocks all crawlers, including
Google. Do they rely on a very strong offline presence and have no need for
organic online marketing?

User-agent: * Disallow: /

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ryanwlessard
There's a very big vision here. E-commerce growth provides a tremendous
opportunity for this company to not only rethink the end point but the network
itself. We have one at my office and it's incredibly convenient. I completely
stopped using my home address for any deliveries.

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bmoggach
Glad to hear you're loving the service Ryan! Thanks for all the support, we'll
see you around the Hub soon!

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hnriot
These are ugly things, and I'm sure that it wont be long before they are used
for nefarious purposes.

So instead of going to the UPS offices to pick up the package for free, I
instead go to one of these for a fee. I don't see the advantage, there are UPS
locations everywhere and are easy enough to get to.

This just seems like an ugly solution to a not real problem, and with a WebVan
like costly infrastructure before it's even remotely useful. There has to be
enough of these ugly green boxes to be more convenient than the just going to
the shipping depot, the cost to get to that point seems prohibitively high,
after any significant number of boxes they will become targets for theft and
vandalism too, another operations cost to deal with. Webvan revisited.

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necubi
You seem to have a very myopic viewpoint, unable to see that just because you
may not have a use for this, it couldn't possibly solve an actual problem. If
you live in the city and don't have a car, getting packages can be a huge
pain. I live in San Francisco, and would love a service like this. Packages
can't be delivered to my apartment (the door opens onto a city street), and
since I don't drive to work having packages delivered there can by annoying as
well. If one of these were installed within a few blocks of me I would very
happily use it.

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thedangler
I reached out to these guys seeing how I could set one up in my city. Never
heard from them.

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rexf
Looks like they're focused on Toronto: "The team has plans to expand into 100
new locations, including convenience stores, grocery stores, and transit
stations within Toronto"

The service sounds useful as a way to receive deliveries (and potentially a
place to drop off a small package for pickup later by yourself in the same
day).

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MaysonL
Is that what the mysterious "GTA" on their site means? "Greater Toronto Area"?
Groan..

If so, they could probably save themselves a lot of puzzled support emails by
expanding the TLA.

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colmvp
People in Toronto know what GTA stands for.

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rlander
It should be clear on the homepage which cities are currently being served.

I signed up, hoping to see a list of locations, but the only option is to
edit/cancel my account? Definitely not ready for launch...

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JSadowski
On the very form where they collect your email:

"Receive your online orders at our new parcel kiosks in the Toronto area"

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rlander
Very ingenious, that box has just been updated...

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polyfractal
Having had stuff stolen from my front porch before (because I wasn't around to
collect the package)...this sounds like a pretty clever idea.

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JSadowski
This may take off, but they need some sort of unlimited plan as well. The
reason Amazon Prime does so well is because some people can't get over the
mental hurdle of paying for shipping. At $3 per package, on top of whatever
existing shipping rate there is, BufferBox could be seen as cost-prohibitive
to many frequent online shoppers.

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cjrp
Amazon do this in the UK with their Locker service[1]. I haven't tried it, but
it seems like a good idea and solves a problem I've certainly run into in the
past.

[1]
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200742950)

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lobster_johnson
We had a system exactly like this in Norway. It was run by the Norwegian
postal service. It was shut down after just a year or two of operation due to
lack of use, although it's evident that the main cause was mismanagement. Very
few people were actually aware that the system existed.

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fluxon
zBox.com solved the problem of not-home package delivery and pickup, with
weather-resistant IR-wireless crypto-locked locking boxes in 1999-2000[1]. The
USPS, UPS and Fedex driver's existing Palm-based scanners would communicate
either by IRDA to the box front panel, or would display a secure unlock code
to be typed into the keypad, encrypted based on current time of day, vendor,
and customer. zBox had testing deals with the three top package co's, and had
funding from USPS and Whirlpool. They went broke and shut down in 2001. I
still have an electronics package, and a dev kit.

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20010721122740/http://www.zbox.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010721122740/http://www.zbox.com/)

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brohee
The French post office (la Poste) have been offering that service for a few
years, it's very convenient. very surprised it didn't exist before in the US.

<http://www.cityssimo.fr/>

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mirsadm
I'm not sure I get this one. Why would you not want something delivered to
your house? Isn't that what the post office does if you aren't there to accept
the package?

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nsp
In NYC at least (admittedly an outlier in the united states), most apartments
don't have doormen and there's no place to leave packages and package pickup
locations are almost uni formally in warehouse districts/boroughs hard to
access via public transit

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GFischer
Same here in Montevideo, Uruguay.

I actually had thought of a variant on the idea, but never implemented it. I
love it, and would like to have it implemented here (maybe if things are going
better for me next year, I could partner with them :) ).

There's a lot of potential IMO.

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laberge
So stoked on these guys. I met them about 6 months ago and was excited then as
I am now :)

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kyro
Really good job at using Bootstrap there. You guys have really made it your
own.

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aristidb
Wow, these boxes are tiny. A Packstation is about 3 to 6 times as big.

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dutchbrit
I wonder how/if they can handle packages that need a signature?

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ricardobeat
A nice target for burglars :)

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ShabbyDoo
So is following around the UPS truck pretending to be doing door-to-door
sales.

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sharingancoder
Meh!

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davidpayne11
Thats it..this is getting on my nerves.Look at HN's homepage, of-late, there's
been too many articles on un-interesting YC startups (most of them) and worse
yet, most of them, from TechCrunch. TechCrunch gets paid for featuring YC
start-ups or what?

<http://i.imgur.com/imXhb.png>

