Amazon’s Prime Day gives shoppers an opportunity to flex their deal-spotting muscles ahead of Black Friday. It also gives package thieves their own chance to warm up.
Although the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas see far more parcel deliveries—and therefore, more brazen from-the-stoop thefts, Prime Day’s limited 48-hour window creates a concentrated opening for “porch pirates” to make their move, said Brody Buhler, managing director of Accenture’s post and parcel industry group.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how many cardboard boxes are pilfered from plain sight around the invented summer buying spree, since customers can report thefts to one of three sources—the local police department, the retailer or the mail carrier—and those reports aren’t tallied centrally. But according to research from video-doorbell company Ring, 19% of U.S. households had a package stolen at some point in 2017 with an average value of $140 per package. Nextdoor, a social-networking app for neighborhoods, says user comments about package theft spiked 85% between July 18 and 20 last year, the main delivery period for Prime Day packages… Bloomberg
