Porch pirates are real-life Grinches. Here’s how to keep them from stealing your Christmas.

Only 26 days separate Thanksgiving and Christmas this year – the fewest number of days possible. That’s not a lot of time to get into or enjoy the holiday spirit!

I don’t know about you, but for me nothing kills that spirit more than package theft. According to the latest numbers, as many as 58 million Americans have been victimized over the past year, to the tune of $12 billion in stolen merchandise. A staggering nine out of ten Americans now worry about pilfered holiday parcels.

As a UPS driver, I see my main job as making what I call ‘good’ deliveries. This means either getting shipments directly into the customer’s hands; somehow alerting the customer of my arrival by knocking on the door, ringing the bell, or waving to them through a window; or placing packages in such a way as not to be easily seen from the street or by random passersby. In my mind, what makes a delivery ‘good’ is the simple fact that it gets – or is likely to get – to its recipient without it being damaged or stolen.

I do my best to prevent package theft, but I cannot guarantee a good delivery 100 percent of the time. I’m aware of my surroundings, sure, but I can’t always know if I’m being followed by wily and determined porch pirates.

Fortunately this work doesn’t fall to me alone; shoppers also have a part to play in ensuring the safe arrival of their online orders. Here are my suggestions for anyone hoping to partner with me in the sadly necessary work of thwarting porch piracy:

1. Have someone home when you expect your delivery. I get it, this is wildly unrealistic. Most folks are neither able nor willing to wait around until folks like me show up. But since stealing boxes off doorsteps is a crime of opportunity, this reduces that opportunity to pretty much zero, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with this suggestion.
2. Arrange for a neighbor to accept or retrieve your delivery. If you already know your neighbor, this is a simple way to strengthen that connection. If you don’t, it’s a chance to create a new connection! Many of us are blessed with good neighbors, and if you’re like me, you’re looking for reasons to interact with them. Asking them to be on hand for a scheduled delivery is a relatively easy ask, and it just might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Even if it isn’t, building trust and cohesion among neighbors creates a sense of collective efficacy that’s been shown to reduce neighborhood crime.
3. Provide explicit written instructions in your absence. I always appreciate when customers post directions to a safer delivery point – say, to another door or porch on the side or back of the residence. This doesn’t guarantee that the delivery person will always follow through on your instructions, but you can’t expect them to do what you don’t explicitly ask them to do.
4. Designate a secure or safer delivery point and notify the major delivery companies. Some customers have given UPS the code to their garage doors. Others have shared codes with Amazon to sheds or lockers they’ve built or purchased for the purpose of receiving deliveries; those codes appear right on the shipping label as part of their address. Locks on latches or doors are great theft deterrents, but they’re not always needed. Sometimes it’s just about getting the packages out of the sight of prying eyes and creating just enough friction to discourage would-be thieves. More than one customer has built a privacy curtain or hedge on their front stoop, or placed an empty (non-transparent) plastic tub large enough to fit most of the boxes they ordinarily receive in a given day.
5. Insist on customer contact. Some shippers already require a signature for some (usually higher-value) shipments. But you can notify the major delivery companies to treat every package as a ‘signature release’ package, thereby ensuring that nothing gets left outside your residence when no one is home.
6. Consider an alternate delivery point. Plenty of people now have their personal online orders shipped to their workplaces. But did you know you can also have Amazon shipments delivered to an Amazon Locker, and most everything to an official UPS Access Point like a UPS Store?This is slightly less convenient for you, but it’s much less convenient for criminals too.

Porch pirates are a nuisance for shoppers and delivery drivers alike. They make my job harder by adding time and steps to each stop. But I much prefer doing the additional work to ensure a good delivery than having to follow up on missing parcels – there’s a fair bit of paperwork involved in filing a claim, since the delivery company assumes the liability.

Still, it’s the customer who’s most affected by package theft. It can make the difference between a happy holiday and a not-so-merry Christmas. Few things are worse than the feeling of your space being violated by unwanted intruders. So don’t let these Grinches steal your joy this season!