Hermes is expanding a scheme where a customer’s neighbours will be compensated for taking in their packages.
The PaketFuxxen project allows members of a local community to sign up to regularly accept deliveries to their area for 30 cents per package. The scheme is not just open for packages delivered by Hermes but also other carriers.
Hermes also envisages customers using the address to return unwanted parcels.
The concept will now be expanded to Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, having already been trialled in Nuremberg.
Many customers already specify their neighbour’s address as an alternative if they are not able to accept the delivery themselves.
However, Hermes’s project is an attempt to professionalise this informal network. Ultimately, Dennis Kollmann, chief sales officer at Hermes Germany, said, the aim is to offer PaketFuxx to other delivery companies or online retailers as an option in the checkout process.
If successful, this will reduce failed deliveries and the resultant emissions from repeatedly revisiting an address. It will also save couriers time, as they will be able to deposit all the parcels for one area at one place and move onto a new route.
The trial will help to demonstrate the benefits of the scheme as well as whether the fee is sufficient to encourage consumers to take providing the service seriously.
