Not everyone may not be familiar with a yellow box named Granger that recently started living at Vancouver Mall. Or, an identical yellow box that goes by Mija at the Plaid Pantry downtown.
Both are Amazon Lockers that store packages for people who order online through Amazon.com. Recipients use a one-time code to open the locker and retrieve their package. (And yes, all Amazon Lockers have different names.)
While there are dozens of Amazon Lockers in Portland, Clark County has two. The one at the mall has 75 spaces of varying sizes to store packages. It’s at the east end of the mall near J.C. Penney and the Mall Library Connection.
The Amazon Locker at Plaid Pantry, at 514 Washington St., has 35 spaces and went live at the end of March. Amazon approached Plaid Pantry in November about putting lockers in its convenience stores, said Jonathan Polonsky, president of Plaid Pantry.
“When we did our 10 test stores, they were very happy,” he said.
The Beaverton, Ore.-based chain has 110 convenience stores in the Pacific Northwest stretching from Salem, Ore. to Bothell, but most stores are in the Portland metro area. Amazon installed the lockers at 72 locations, including the one on Washington Street.
Vancouver’s other Plaid Pantry, at 1002 W. Fourth Plain Blvd. in a more industrial, less trafficked part of town, does not have one of the lockers.
Amazon launched the locker system five years ago in response to failed postal deliveries. Packages left on porches can get stolen, a federal crime that’s investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
“In Vancouver and Portland, our postal inspectors stay pretty active,” said Jeremy Leder, a postal inspector based out of the Seattle division, which serves the Vancouver area.
Locally, mail theft ebbs and flows as organized groups of mail thieves get busy and then get dismantled by postal inspectors. Spikes in mail theft typically happen in November and December, when people order and ship holiday gifts.
Having packages delivered to a secure holding site like an Amazon Locker is “obviously a really good idea” if people aren’t going to be at home when a package will be delivered, Leder said.
The boxes look like larger, more robust neighborhood mail collection boxes.
There are other steps people can take to secure incoming shipments. People having packages delivered through the U.S. Postal Service can work with the agency to delay deliveries or have packages held at a post office, Leder said.
Another idea is to mail packages to work instead of home, or have a trusted neighbor pick up packages.
UPS has Access Point Lockers, where missed deliveries can be picked up using a similar self-service system. Although Clark County does not have any of these lockers, eight locations serve as Access Point stores; that means eligible shipments can be sent to the store and kept there until they’re ready to be picked up.
FedEx has its own version of the self-service locker, which was rolled out to stores in Texas and one in Tennessee. Also, Wal-Mart is testing self-service lockers at 10 stores in the Washington, D.C., area.
