Getting your deliveries is about to get easier than ever. Thanks to a new partnership between online retailer Jet and smart access system Latch, you may be spared those “we missed you” slips from the mailman. Now, more than 100,000 residents of 1,000 buildings in New York City will be able to take advantage of the Latch residential “R” system, which pulls together a reader, door controller, and management system to allow deliverymen and women easy but safe access to your home.
With Latch, you can unlock a door (in this case, a building’s front door), with an iOS or Android smartphone, smartcard, or special doorcode. Building residents and managers can keep tabs on when guests arrive at a building, and when you’re not home, you can select the people and services who will be able to access your place of residence.
Best of all, the installation of the Latch R system will cost customers absolutely nothing — rather, the installation fee will be covered by a “joint investment” from both Jet and Latch. Once the system is installed, residents of selected buildings will be able to use their smartphones as a key for deliveries. When someone buzzes to be let in, residents can grant access (or not) simply by pressing a button on their mobile device. And building superintendents can also choose to use Latch to allow trusted delivery providers into the building.
The 1,000 units that will be installed at the onset of this partnership will be pre-programmed to grant access to all of Jet’s delivery partners, but others can be added at building managers’ discretion.
The addition of the Latch system could be a game changer for city dwellers, particularly for those (and there are many) who live in a building without a doorman or a smart access system. And of course, Jet must be hoping that if it becomes easier to get packages at home, people will order more of these packages.
As TechCrunch reports, this is by no means the only strategy Jet is trying out to improve its delivery methods. The firm is also checking out on-demand orders and offsite storage, but for now, getting a free Latch system on your front door certainly seems like a good place to start.
