Online Retailers Primed for Post-Prime Day Package Thieves to Go to Town

by Mindy Cohn
It's Amazon Prime Day, but with porch pirate thefts on the rise overall, package thefts after Prime Day are expected to rise by at least another 40%.
And while package thefts are a personal problem for many buyers, the estimated 1.7 million packages that go missing daily across the U.S. mean more of a headache for online retailers. This is because, in most cases, the retailers have to refund customers for the losses, which can be astronomical in the aftermath of the Amazon Prime Day porch theft escalation.
Not only do the thefts create a financial loss, but online retailers also lose time while sorting out each theft. Additionally, each claim for an Amazon seller affects the "Order Defect Rate," which calculates the amount held in reserve before issuing payment to the seller.
To protect their transactions, online Amazon retailers can deliver purchases to customers at an automated Amazon Hub Locker or Hub Counter instead of a private address. More safe-keeping Hub Lockers and Counters locations can be found in zip codes where packages are stolen more regularly.
So while sales will be higher after Amazon Prime Day, online retailers will only calculate their profits once all the packages have been delivered into the right hands and safely accounted for.