Yale Smart Delivery Box Is Here, Can It Keep Your Mail Safe From Thieves?

The Yale Smart Delivery Box was introduced at CES back in the beginning of the year.

Now it’s here to keep your mail and Amazon deliveries safe from thieves.

How does it work?

Exactly as you’d expect it.

It’s a big plastic box delivery people can use to drop off your mail or packages, instead of abandoning them on your doorstep.

It measures 24 x 14 x 14 inches (61cm x 36cm x 51cm), has a hinged lid and a big “Deliveries” stamp on it, so no one can miss what it’s for.

Depending on what design you pick, with or without legs, the Yale Smart Delivery Box goes for $229 or $279.

Both of them come with the new Yale smart lock, which lets you secure the box with a keypad and PIN code, a voice assistant, the app or simply have it automatically lock when you close the lid.

The lock itself has a glow-in-the-dark safety button, so there is no risk of children playing inside the box and becoming stuck.

This delivery box does promise to solve most of the problems with getting deliveries when you’re away, minus a few details that could probably be solved once the boxes gain mainstream adoption.

First off, how to convince the delivery people to actually use it instead of dumping your packages on the porch?

That might take a while.

One reviewer from The Verge said that he tested the box for five days and had six deliveries with less than stellar results.

“Out of those six, five ignored the box and one FedEx delivery person used it.tracked 6 packages and, out of those, just 1 of them was actually placed in the box by the courier,” the reviewer noted. 

Then, there’s the problem for those receiving lots of mail.

The Verge mentioned there is a “Delivery Mode” available which keeps the box unlocked until the next time it’s opened and closed.

That might help for one delivery a day but if you have more packages incoming, the next delivery people will find the box closed.

Hopefully in the future Yale will partner with more delivery carriers and create a seamless way to share an unlock code for it.

Until then, at least some of your packages will be safe from porch pirates.