Week 2 Blog Social Listening

Amazon's latest service wants you to feel comfortable letting delivery people into your home to drop off your packages.

Amazon has designed a new service called Amazon Key, it is designed to allow delivery drivers delivering your packages access to leave the packages inside your home.  Amazon key is a smart lock that you install on your door allowing drivers with the app to be able to deliver those holiday or regular packages inside your door, so they do not get stolen while you are at work.  

  The way it works is, you install the smart lock and set up the video camera to face the door.  Amazon sends you a notification when the delivery driver is a minute or two from delivery.  This allows you the ability to watch from your smart phone your packages getting delivered.  The delivery driver knocks as normal to make sure that you are not home.  Once they are sure that no one is home they scan the package(s) and that enables the app on their phone to work with your smart lock unlocking your door, allowing the driver to leave your packages inside your home safe, and sound. As shown in this video from Inside Edition.

Amazon's value proposition is that your packages will be safe and sound in your home.  You won’t have to worry if your packages are going to be on your porch when you get home, or if someone is going to come by and steal them.  It saves people as well as company's money from having to deal with people not calling because their package was not on their doorstep when it should have been.

 Some things that people have said about Amazon Key, they are worried about delivery drivers not closing the door all the way, letting pets out when they should be safe in their homes, dogs biting protecting their home, the thought of people being robbed, and then the technology getting hacked and having random people getting into your home. I personally can relate to all the feelings that people commenting have had.  I would not want someone I do not know having access to my home.  That is my safe place and giving that up is not an option for me.

 For $250.00 for the equipment and an additional $69.00 a year for the cloud cam service, you can have the convenience of dry, safe packages, but is it worth the possibility of the safety and security of yourself, your family and your home?  That is the question you need to ask yourself, what are you willing to give up for this convenience. There is so much social media and new technology out there that we give up a little more of our own privacy just to have the new gadgets, is this new technology going too far?  I guess it depends on who you are and how you feel about your privacy.  From what I have read in the comments it seems like Amazon might be going to far with this one.