When I lived in NYC and like most didn’t own a car this was the way it worked (sans the neighbor, delivering a package to the wrong recipient is a big no no, and makes some huge assumptions about the neighbor, relationship to the neighbor, and sensitivity of the delivery). If you weren’t home you got a hang tag. They attempted redelivery a few times, held it for a while for pickup, then sent it back.
I worked, like most folks, and people are not generally home. The pickup location took two hours to get to via public transit. That’s a four hour round trip. There was one and only one pickup location in the entire NYC region for fedex.
It made life impossible. Amazon came along and decided to take responsibility for losses directly and instructed carriers to leave packages and not reattempt delivery or hold them. Customers vastly preferred this, carriers too as they saved tons of money. Amazon got a reputation for being much more convenient to order from. Their losses as a percentage were low compared to essentially owning mail order due to the convenience. When I had packages stolen they immediately shipped a replacement no questions asked.
Amazon Key is an attempt to mitigate theft but also a lot of folks just feel uncomfortable with packages on their front step. The idea of leaving you garage slightly open for deliveries isn’t a new one, but the Key product improves on that by only opening for the delivery person and recording their interactions to ensure they don’t do something they shouldn’t.
I used it briefly but I didn’t like it because I have a workshop in my garage and I just didn’t want people seeing what I’m working on. I wasn’t worried they would rob me per se, just didn’t like showing my work in progress to random strangers. If it opened the garage slightly to allow the package delivery I would have kept it but it opened 100%.
