Every day, 1.7

million packages are stolen or go missing off doorsteps across the

country. This is higher than it's ever been before and it's costing Amazon

and other sellers millions.

Expansion of online retail has resulted in expansion in the crime of

package theft, which brings you to something around $9 billion a year in

stolen packages. Now creative solutions are popping up everywhere, from

doorbell cameras to automatic locks, porch lockers to alternative pickup

points. Big and small companies and everyday people are trying to stop the

thieves. This is a custom built bait package that is recording him on four

different cameras and it's about to unleash a pound of the world's finest

glitter along with some other surprises.

We wanted to find out who's losing the most when a package goes missing

and what are Amazon and other companies doing to fight back?

A 2019 survey conducted by insuranceQuotes.com

found that nearly one in five Americans report having a package stolen.

And according to a new study by C+R research, each stolen item costs an

average of $109 to replace, a cost typically passed down to the seller

who's responsible for the refund or replacement.

A lion's share of the loss is being absorbed by the entity doing the

greatest amount of selling, which in this case is Amazon.

Amazon Prime members say they receive on average 51 packages at home every

year, and all respondents spent an average of $222 a month on online

orders. However, 42% of customers say they avoid buying expensive items

online because of theft, meaning Amazon is missing out on even more sales

revenue. In total, the thefts add up to more than $25 million in lost

goods and services each day.

There are stories and anecdotes out there about more organized thieves

actually following trucks and picking packages up off of porches.

But the majority of package theft occurs from someone walking down the

street, seeing an opportunity and grabbing it.

Wakefield Research conducted a study on package theft in 2018 that was

sponsored by Comcast, which owns CNBC.

In urban areas, you see as much as 35 % of adults saying that they've

personally had a package stolen.

In a suburban area, that figure is 20 % and in rural areas it's 13 %.

SafeWise also conducted a study.

It found the places with the highest rates of package theft are the Bay

Area, Salt Lake City and Portland.

Between like 10 and three is going to be the busiest time and it's usually

a time when people are at work or at school or out running errands.

The nicer neighborhoods get packages stolen far more than what you would

think are the rougher sides of town.

And I think because they're going after the better booty.

So what happens when a package is stolen?

According to C+R Research, victims will alert more than one entity.

83 % contact Amazon or the seller, 60 % contact the delivery service, 48 %

checked with neighbors and only 13 % called the police.

So who is it that's financially responsible for the loss?

Your major sellers, your Amazon, eBay, are replacing stolen goods.

The shippers themselves largely aren't incurring this cost.

Now some like FedEx will offer $100 worth of default liability.

You can purchase more.

U.S. Postal Service offers zero liability but you can, of course, purchase

more insurance. But on the whole that $9 billion is being absorbed by the

sellers. Even though it may seem like Amazon replaces your item

immediately after a theft, if that item is sold by a third party, that's

who pays for the replacement or refund.

You can also contact the carrier, the shipper, but they are going to try

to get recourse again from the seller.

But your best chance is to go to where you bought it from and see if

they'll send you out another one.

It's up to the discretion of the seller whether they want to replace your

item. At the end of the day, it's the consumer who pays for this because

think about it, the rates have to go up.

You can't afford to keep having this type of loss.

Although many police departments don't track package theft specifically,

the numbers are definitely up.

Denver, for example, saw a 68 % increase in package theft from 2015 to

2018. Because small retailers and huge sellers like Amazon are spending

more on refunds and replacements every year, they've got a big incentive

to stop the crimes. One solution the e-commerce giant offers is an

automatic front door lock system called Amazon Key, available in 50 cities

for free with compatible smart lock kits.

It lets users unlock the front door remotely, allowing a delivery person

entry into the home. Amazon Key can also open certain garages and

compatible cars, allowing packages to be left in a trunk, for example.

And building managers can use Amazon Key for Business, giving delivery

drivers a smart fob with time limited access to drop off packages inside

an apartment complex. However, C+R Research shows that only 4 % of package

that victims use Amazon Key.

That number may be low for one reason.

Even though you can literally watch it in real time, the idea of unlocking

your door for a stranger while you're not there so they can go in to your

home I think strikes some people as disquieting.

And then there's Amazon lockers.

Packages are left inside these automatic electronic lockers for pickup at

convenience stores, grocery stores, apartment buildings, malls and other

locations in more than 900 U.S.

cities. Locker+ locations, often on college campuses, are staffed and can

hold packages for up to 15 days.

Amazon also offers pickup in-store at certain retailers such as Rite Aid,

GNC, Health Mart and Stage Stores.

We have 11 % who said that they're sending their deliveries to an Amazon

locker or similar type of service.

And then we have 10 % who said that they use some sort of package lockbox.

These individual lockboxes like these from Kingsley Park are often secured

to a porch where carriers enter an access code to leave packages.

And then finally, we have 18 % of respondents said that they wind up

sending their deliveries to their work address.

Amazon says the vast majority of deliveries make it to customers without

an issue and that its customer service is available 24/7.

Amazon Map Tracking also allows customers to view the progress of their

delivery in real time when a driver is close.

And for packages delivered by Amazon it offers a photo on delivery.

Of course not all online shopping happens on Amazon.

So there's also a variety of smaller companies offering electronic smart

lockers. It's really tough to put a canoe into our lockers or a mattress,

but other than that, we put tires all the time, we take some pretty big

items through the lockers.

Parcel Pending has 4,000 locker locations at retail and grocery stores,

companies and apartment complexes in 48 states and Canada.

We've been working with one e-tailer who ships over 300 million packages

and they have talked about tens of millions of dollars of loss in

packages. And so to put in a solution like an electronic locker system,

for them it's almost a drop in the bucket because the loss in packages is

not an insurable event for them.

So it's coming out of their pocket.

When lockers aren't an option, consumers often turn to more homegrown

solutions.

About a third of consumers will actually have a package delivered to a

friend or have a friend or neighbor or family member pick up the package.

Some things are more extreme.

We actually found one in five have taken a sick day or called in a PTO or

vacation day to their employer so that they could be home specifically to

receive a package that they were afraid might be stolen.

The carriers themselves now offer a solution too: skip porch deliveries

altogether by picking up your package at a storefront.

We've got between the UPS Stores and then we announced a partnership with

CVS, Michaels, Advance Auto to add a third one in there, where receivers

can say, okay, I want my packages delivered in those stores as opposed to

their home. UPS says it delivers around 20 million packages every day and

that 63 million customers have signed up for its My Choice program.

Customers can schedule deliveries, reroute packages or set their default

package delivery location to one of 40,000 secure access points around the

world. In the next year or so, 90 to 95 % of the U.S.

coverage will be within five miles of a UPS access point.

FedEx, which says it delivers 15 million packages a day, has a similar

program called Delivery Manager.

It lets customers enter specific instructions for where and how couriers

should make a delivery or lets you reroute a package for pickup at one of

14,000 retail locations like FedEx Office stores, Walgreens, Krogers and

Albertsons. By 2026 we expect the growth to be roughly 100 million

packages a day.

So we're going to have to have plans in place to make sure that there

aren't packages laying out on people's front porches for hours or in some

cases days if they're not home.

And USPS offers a service called Informed Delivery, which it says has more

than 21 million subscribers.

It offers a snapshot of every day's expected deliveries and allows

subscribers to opt for a package to be held at a post office instead of

being left at the front door.

FedEx, UPS, USPS and other carriers also offer package tracking.

And although you can file a claim for missing packages if they were

insured through the carrier, it's typically not the carrier's

responsibility once it's arrived.

Once a package is delivered, it's out of our custodial control.

And so it's really up to law enforcement to work directly with consumers

on any reported theft.

There's a handful of outside companies like TrackerSense and Logistimatics

that make one time GPS trackers for packages.

And then there's startups trying to streamline the entire tracking

process. LA-based Route recently launched its app to offer one-stop-shop

tracking for consumers.

So you open up our app and you see everything that you've ordered from

every merchant in a single map interface.

Route says its algorithms can detect if a package is wrongfully reported

as stolen, helping reduce loss for its 1,800 merchant partners.

And for a fee of 1 % of the item's value, Route will also cover the cost

if a package is stolen. Once the carrier usually drops the package off on

a porch, their job of delivering that is done and a lot of times that's

why they're taking pictures now to show, you know, the proof that the

package was actually delivered.

We're pretty alone on an island in covering porch pirating.

Doorbell cameras are now a common way that consumers try to protect their

packages once they're no longer the carrier's responsibility.

C+R Research found that 25 % of package theft victims install doorbell

cameras like the systems made by Boston-based SimpliSafe.

It's making sure that we have that reliable, high quality video footage

where you're going to capture the face of the person on it so that if

somebody does steal a package, we can follow up on that.

But doorbell cameras don't only capture those with bad intentions.

Their American flag that they had outside their front door had fallen down

and the moment captured on video was a neighbor walking by, seeing that,

righting the flag and saluting to the flag before moving on.

If a crime is underway, SimpliSafe now offers realtime monitoring of video

footage when an alarm is triggered and can dispatch police to the home.

They will know that this is not a false alarm, it's not a waste of time.

This is a really valuable use of their time to catch a crime in action.

And there's a lot of controversy.

Some people feel like, you know, it's giving a lot of access to Big

Brother. But I think we all want Big Brother helping us when it's helping

us recover from a crime.

SimpliSafe's video doorbell costs $169 and it offers a smart lock starting

at $99. Competitor Ring starts at $99.99.

And Google's Nest Hello video doorbell starts at $229.

The problem with that is you get a picture of the bad guy and you see the

bad guy walk away with the package.

But what are you going to do with the bad guy?

Who's going to go after him and is anything really going to happen?

And are you going to catch the guy who took your item?

Typically not.

Hey, put that down.

Screenshots of package thieves from these doorbell cameras often end up

posted online in forums like Nextdoor in hopes the community will

recognize and stop the thieves.

More and more, neighbors are taking matters into their own hands from

baiting thieves with garbage-filled packages, boxes rigged to explode with

blank shotgun shells, or the infamous glitter bomb packages planted by a

former NASA engineer.

We would want to encourage people not to take the law into their own hands

and to go through the proper process of alerting police and not try to set

anything up that could be potentially dangerous.

Carriers and law enforcement recommend filing a police report when a

package theft occurs. When you see the same body type and disguise

happening repeatedly in a neighborhood and you're keeping that footage and

you're sharing it with local law enforcement, there's a much better chance

that you are going to catch someone.

Still, even with a police report, the chances of catching them are slim.

It's actually really quite difficult to find people who are doing this,

really unless you're caught in the act.

The Denver Police Department, one of the few that tracks package theft,

says it arrested 7 % of package thieves in 2018.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is your best bet.

However, they were able to make arrests of less than 1 % of the number of

packages that are being stolen per year.

And that's just arrests. It's not convictions and it's not necessarily

finding any of the lost loot.

USPS says postal inspectors arrested almost 2,500 suspects for theft of

mail and packages in 2018.

The average value of a stolen package is far below what would constitute a

felony. In California, for example, the item needs to be worth more than

$950. But in South Carolina, a proposed Defense Against Porch Pirates Act

would make it a felony. And in Texas, lawmakers recently passed a bill

that would fine package thieves between $4,000 and $10,000 with a possible

jail sentence between six months and 10 years.

And some police departments have experimented with beating thieves with

packages and staking out doorsteps.

The reality is, as Amazon continues to bring more shoppers online, there

are simply more opportunities for these easy, simple thefts.

I think it's our job to continue innovating because there will be

continued innovation on the criminal side as well.

Amazon and other sellers are highly motivated to stop the huge losses

incurred by package theft, which means the solutions are constantly

improving from doorbell cameras, tracking and secure locations for package

delivery. There will come a time when we look back at the way we handled

e-commerce deliveries, and I think it'll probably seem fairly primitive

that you just have these cardboard boxes sitting on porches.

Whether it's things like the Amazon Key or lockboxes, technological

innovation is so robust right now and especially if you combine that with

an opportunity for individual entrepreneurs to make money from solving

this problem, I really think that it will be figured out to some extent.

I actually think it's probably gotten a little tougher for criminals to

steal something because there's more attention paid to this, consumer

awareness on it is growing, which our data reflects.

But you're starting from a pretty easy position.

This is not a difficult crime to commit.