Hey everyone — moved into a small 6-unit walk-up in Dyker a few weeks ago. I don’t have an inner buzzer door; the front door opens right into a little vestibule and then the stairs. UPS and FedEx keep leaving boxes on the floor under the mailboxes where anyone can grab them.

Landlord says “no package room, this is how it’s always been.” I’ve only had one thing go missing, a cheap phone case, but I’m starting to get nervous ordering anything more than $20. Do people in these buildings just get stuff delivered to work? Should I be using a locker? My schedule is weird so no doorman.

Welcome to the real NYC amenity check. No package room is a dealbreaker unless you redirect. I’m in Flatbush, similar layout, and I learned after a stolen package that the vestibule is basically a community free table.

Don’t wait for the landlord to fix it. At minimum start with UPS My Choice and FedEx Delivery Manager to hold at Walgreens or a local store. Amazon Locker is your best friend for Prime stuff. For USPS, Informed Delivery doesn’t hold packages unless you do a Hold Mail or pay for premium forwarding. And never get signature-required if you’re not home; you’ll spend Saturday at a distribution center.

Have you tried the UPS Access Point at a bodega/deli? That’s the real move! Not every deli takes everything, but many will hold for you if you set it as a preference.

Also there are now Amazon Hub Lockers inside certain drugstores and gas stations in the Dyker/Bensonhurst area, not just Whole Foods. The trick is adding the address to your Amazon address book BEFORE checkout, not after. And check the hours! Some hubs close at 9 p.m. even if the store stays open. I once had to wait until the next morning for a 24-hour Duane Reade that wasn’t 24-hour for packages! USPS still the worst though. Have you tried redirecting UPS to the customer center on 43rd? Exclamation!

Wait, so bodegas actually hold packages even if you didn’t ask? There’s one on my corner but I thought they only accept for people who know them.

How do you set it up with Amazon? I tried the “deliver to nearby pickup” thing but didn’t see the bodega listed, only Whole Foods and the Amazon Fresh over on 7th. Also, is it weird to ship to your apartment if your name isn’t on the buzzer? I put a note on the inside door and USPS still left it outside. Not a big deal for clothes but I need to order a monitor for work and I’m not trying to lose that.

Thanks Flatbush_Fi. I set up the UPS My Choice free account last night after reading this. It said I could redirect to a CVS but it wanted something like a premium for future packages? Or maybe I clicked wrong.

Does the free version still let you choose a pickup spot at checkout time? I also taped a note to the front door saying “please do not leave in vestibule, call/text” and the UPS guy apparently ignored it because I just got a notification with a photo of my box sitting under the mailboxes. At least the photo was clear lol.

This is purely a landlord/structure issue. In Cobble Hill I had a building with an inner security door that stayed locked. Packages still disappeared because someone buzzed in for a “delivery” or maybe a neighbor’s guest.

The only real fix is not to treat the entryway as a doorstep. I’d skip the note; drivers have 200 stops and won’t call/text. Use Amazon Lockers for electronics. For anything more than about $50 I ship to my office or to a friend with a doorman. A camera doorbell is a fun idea until it gets yanked off the wall or the battery dies in a stairwell. If the landlord won’t put in a keypad or inner door, you’re just renting a package drop.

@CobbleHill_C yeah the keypad retrofit is the dream but most small landlords won’t spring for it. That said, my super installed a cheap combination deadbolt for the inner door himself. Not legal? Probably not. But it cut the random drop problem in half.

For the monitor, @newbie_nate_nyc, just ship it to the UPS Customer Center. No line before 10 a.m. and you can open the box in your hallway to make sure it isn’t cracked. I would not trust a bodega with a monitor unless you know they have a shelf, not a floor behind the counter.

This problem is basically the reverse angle of the earlier thread “Window AC drip wars: do I knock on the upstairs door or just rig my own fix?” — it’s always the small-building stuff that no one wants to fix until someone else acts first. See Window AC drip wars: do I knock on the upstairs door or just rig my own fix?.

Same energy: ask the landlord to install a secure inner door or a keypad, or just DIY a small-ish fix and hope. In our building, four of us split the cost of a secondhand hallway shelf with labels, but the landlord told us to remove it because it blocked fire egress. So now we’re back to porch pirate season.

Thanks all. I ordered the monitor to the UPS pickup point downtown. Not ideal carrying it on the R but better than a porch pirate.

Also found out my corner bodega does take UPS packages for $1 if you ask in advance, but he only does packages under a certain size. I might use that for smaller stuff. DykerNewbie, did you try the Amazon locker on 86th? The one inside the chain pharmacy? I used it once but the code didn’t scan at first. Might have been my screen brightness.