I love Amazon. And I really love and trust Amazon Prime when I am told my very important, late night purchase will arrive in two days or less. But do I trust Amazon to unlock my door and place said very important fruit slicer inside my home? What? We all need a 3 in 1 apple, potato, mango slicer. No, we don’t.
Nor do we need a stranger to unlock our door and put it in our house. But for $249.99 Amazon will sell you Amazon Key, a service that will do just that.
Available to Prime members in 37 U.S. cities, Amazon Key is Amazon’s newest attempt at smart gadgets while weaseling themselves even further into our homes, one brown box and delivery person at a time.
The Amazon Key kit includes an Amazon Cloud Cam security camera which connects to your home’s Wi-Fi, a smart lock from your choice of two reputable brands, and an app used to monitor delivery times, lock and unlock your door, and live stream the camera’s view.
Amazon also offers free in-home installation if you don’t want to install it yourself. And if you don’t want to bring a package in the house, I don’t blame you for not wanting to install the thing that would lighten your load.
By scanning your package’s bar code, an Amazon courier will send a message to Amazon’s cloud asking permission to unlock your door. If all checks out, the delivery person will open your door and place your package inside.
To be fair, the technology is pretty cool. With the kit, Amazon Key lets you remotely unlock your door to let in a friend who got into town before you could make it home from work. It also allows you to tap into the Amazon Home Services section, where you can purchase services from their list of verified professionals.
Have a leaky toilet? With Amazon Key, you can click your way through the Home Improvement section until you find someone in your area who can fix your toilet. They will unlock your door, fix your toilet, likely rummage through your underwear drawer, and you don’t have to be home for any of it.
The Cloud Cam, which is Alexa compatible, runs 24/7. It is installed inside your home and acts as a security camera so you can monitor your front door from the inside. But since it runs 24/7, the cloud is also monitoring your front door from the inside of your home.
As we know, the cloud is never 100% secure, 100% of the time. There’s not much to see, but I don’t want a hacker to be watching the goings-on in my foyer.
I get the appeal of having your purchases tucked safely inside your house to prevent theft and weather damages. But as much as I trust Amazon, I don’t trust people. And convenience isn’t always convenient if it leads to someone burglarizing your home, doing weird things on your couch, or accidentally letting your deaf dog run out of the house and across town to dumpster dive at the local KFC.
Alas, many people will be fine with these risks and will continue to let Amazon take control of their lives one purchase at a time, but I’m going to keep it old school and let my delivery person leave my pretty brown box on the outside of my front door instead of on the inside.