There’s been a spate of news lately concerning UPS or Fedex truck drivers mistreating and mishandling various parcels. Whether it’s a Fedex guy throwing a box over a fence or a a UPS dude tossing the parcel at the door, it’s pretty clear that the integrity your goods often lies in very human hands. So, UK-based Cambridge Consultants (which we’ve mentioned before) have developed the DropTag. It’s a Bluetooth-enabled sensor that can automatically tell a smartphone equipped with the related application whether the package being delivered to you has been mishandled. Most people don’t take the time to open a package and inspect the goods while the delivery man is still in the door, which means they can’t send it back right away and have to deal with that hassle later on. With the DropTag, a simple scan of your phone is enough to tell you if you need to take a closer look at your products.
It’s not currently a mass market product, but they will be demonstrating a prototype at Hannover MESSE, April 8-12.
[ Product Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]
This is a fantastic idea. I’m sure may people would pay $10 or so for this feature to ensure that their expensive and delicate packages were treated as such.
I work for UPS and I have seen something like this before. What people don’t understand is that boxes get beat up before I even touch it and load it. (I load semi trucks). When you have a couple hundred boxes coming down the belt and you have to keep up with the flow and load at least 250 packages an hour. You don’t have time to make sure the box isn’t damaged. Even though we are rough on the boxes my area at UPS we have a damage rate of 1/80,000.