Dear PoP – Package Delivery?

“Dear PoP,

As a soon-to-be Petworth resident, I wonder what most people do about receiving FedEx or UPS packages in the neighborhood. I’m an Amazon Prime member, and do the majority of my shopping through them. My first try sending a package to my soon-to-be house resulted in UPS leaving a slip for missed delivery, and a refusal to allow a dropoff.

My new place has a decent sized front porch, so I was thinking the ideal solution would be some kind of self-locking box that the UPS or FedEx guy could drop the stuff into. (ie: a metal locking box that I could leave propped open, but once someone puts something in, they could snap the lid down all the way, thus locking it). I can’t find anything that quite fits the bill – does anyone know of anything like this?

I *have* been able to find a monstrous mailbox (that’s pretty much the same as a USPS mailbox) at dvault.com – but this just seems to be overkill: http://www.dvault.com/residential.html

Any help would be greatly appreciated – I really don’t want to have to shell out money to the UPS store to pick up my packages for me.”

I think most people get their packages delivered to their work address. We spoke about the issue a bit here. But if work delivery is not an option what do you guys recommend?