Would you trust Amazon Key to let delivery men into your home?

Lara Williams, Editor-at-large

Amazon Key is the new service that lets delivery men unlock your front door and enter your home, but would you trust it?

Amazon are on a mission to make delivery as convenient as possible. From lockers in supermarkets to the potential of drones delivering to your back garden, the tech giant is now going one step further and entering your home.

Delivery Day

Exclusively for Prime members, the service requires Amazon’s new Cloud Cam and smart lock to work.

After knocking on your door, the driver requests access to your house. Amazon then verifies the parcel belongs to the address, activates Cloud Cam and unlocks the door.

An app keeps you informed through every step of the delivery – alerting you when the driver is close and once your door has been relocked.

This is a major test of consumer trust. It’s one thing to let ever-listening Alexa into your home, but to let a stranger unlock your door?

Amazon have combatted this with the camera part of the equation. The app offers users the option to watch the delivery live or check the video after the delivery is complete.

This will surely take some of the worry away, but still doesn’t take away the fact that Amazon ultimately has control over who you let into your house.

Home Services

It’s not just delivery men that Amazon want to let in either. The plans are to extend access to services booked through Amazon’s Home Services division, such as cleaners or dog walkers.

It’s one thing to let someone slip a parcel in through the door but, unless you have connected cameras in every room of the house, who can be sure your cleaner is up to no good?

Key Issues

Then there’s the issue of the smart lock in the first place. Making things smart can have its perks: you can give friends and family temporary, recurring or permanent access – a feature that could be useful if you’re on holiday or have Airbnb guests for example.

Source: Amazon

However, it also adds complications to something that otherwise works reliably well. In August this year, an update from smart lock maker LockState rendered hundreds of locks useless – unable to lock or unlock.

It’s not hard to imagine more incidents like this in the future, nor is it hard to imagine why some may have security concerns – especially when traditional locks do such a good job of locking and unlocking when you want them to.

If you trust in Amazon and their employees to not meddle with your house’s security, then Amazon Key could unleash a whole new wave of convenience for you. If you don’t like the idea, then there’s always Amazon Lockers, which are likely convenient enough.