Holiday season is upon us, which means online deliveries are starting to pick up. With the convenience of online shopping comes the downside of porch pirates. Porch pirates have become a serious problem year-round for online shoppers. These crimes tend to spike during the holidays with more than two billion packages being shipped between Thanksgiving and the end of December. According to Forbes:
- Over half of Americans know someone who has had a package stolen from outside their home
- Almost a third have had packages stolen themselves
- 53% of consumers report changing plans to be home for a package delivery
With stats like these, there’s a good chance many of your residents have had a package stolen at some point in their life. Your residents are busy this time of year and shouldn’t have to miss work or other obligations to wait at home for a package to arrive. We recommend sharing these five tips with residents to protect them from porch pirates. As for management companies, here a few things you can on your end to keep your residents and their belongings safe this time of year.
Understand Local Crime Statistics
It’s important to understand local crime statistics for your city and zip code to understand your community’s risk for crimes like porch pirates. Shorr Packaging Corporation conducted a study last year focusing on Amazon package theft in major cities. They found the following five cities experience the highest rate of package theft:
- San Francisco
- Seattle
- Minneapolis
- Boston
- Portland
Consider researching stats like these, and even reaching out to local authorities to get a better idea of your community’s risk and what you can do to prevent these crimes from happening.
Share Alternative Shipping Options
While you don’t want to alarm residents or make them feel like their packages won’t be safe sitting on their doorstep, you can present alternative delivery options as a way to prevent package theft for those who work long hours. Find the closest Amazon Hub Locker, FedEx pickup location, and post office and send those as options for residents. You can also remind residents that they can always request signatures for packages they’re sending or receiving, ensuring they’ll only be dropped off if someone is there to sign for them.
Be Honest When Issues Arise
It’s important to be transparent with residents when issues like package thefts occur in the neighborhood. Be sure to give them details around what happened, when it occurred, and most importantly, what’s being done to ensure this won’t happen again. Remind residents to keep an eye out for one another and to always report anything suspicious to your team as soon as possible.
Utilize the Right Tools
If your community has gates or locked doors, ensure you have software that makes it easy to control these access points and provide added peace of mind to residents. For gates, select a solution that allows residents to create visitor passes for approved family and friends, ensuring only those who belong in the community can get in with ease, while keeping those who don’t belong, like porch pirates, out. Tools like visitor management software can also be helpful in providing key forensic data when incidents do occur. This software can tell you exactly who was in the community at any given point in time, which can be turned over to authorities to assist in investigations.
For more information on how technology is transforming community security, download our free whitepaper!
