Other options:
- You can get a locker at a RM depot and have you items default to there, but this costs money. Lockers at shops are temporary space and part of the cost of order / use of system.
- You can get installed on your house somewhere parcels of a certain size can be delivered safely. But not if you rent, live in a block of flats of an area where such boxes would be a target for robbery.
- The more modern blocks of flat being built in city centres now have mail lockers and/or concierge services for parcels. Should you be able to live in such a place.
- There has been an attempt to open specialist delivery shops/drop off points which will ship parcels and returns for you (the business model of some "fashion" retailers has a return rate of up to 70%) and hold ones that come in. But they have not been a success. Tried to use one that had a branch at Manchester Piccadilly station and I couldn't get an item above a certain value (c£1K camera gear) sent to a place that was not my credit/debit card address. The item was eventually left "behind the bins" by the courier for a coupe of days - much safer! Processes not yet quite aligned.
The courier model with drop-off shops is not a bad one. This is combined by running the courier app on your phone or using their website to direct parcels to the shop if you aren't going to be in. These shops however are usually on the same van run as your address - so can be close to home, but might not be convenient if you live in the suburbs but aren't often there when these shops are open. And it still usually defaults to try and drop off first, get card and organise shop second.
The other problem is that many couriers (and the cheapest) are still playing catch up with the technology to redirect and be flexible. And we have a culture that least cost is best when internet shopping, so smallest £ with "free shipping" wins, which defaults to cheapest least flexible courier. Maybe not for £10,000 worth of new loudspeakers, but for the bulk of fashion items, printer inks, trainers etc that now make up the 20% of retail sales that go via the internet. So there is no real choice of service to the customer as you get whatever courier the e-tailer has selected. [This is why I don't use Amazon anymore - you can select a service, but not a provider]
Finally - think what moving 20% of our retailing to home delivery has done to the environment. Shopping in the old style was fairly green in that efficient HGV loads of stock turned up a large purpose built retailers and were collected by individual shoppers who combined it with trips to many other retailers and often with commuting or dropping the kids off at swimming or soccer practice, limiting additional vehicle movements. Especially when city centre shopping was achieved through use of public transport.
Now we have at least a van per courier going through the same-ish routes one to three times a day to deliver less much less than optimal route combinations. Spewing diesel. Now, putting them all back on Royal Mail would probably be some kind of communism, but it would allow for optimisation and probably enough volume to support a number of different delivery options. Lots of plusses and minuses to be discussed there.
Our city designers are now looking at how you can have enough homes, commerce, competition, clean air, driverless vehicles, parks, mass transport that servers everyone and get parcels to people. In the next 10 years the projection is retail to go from 20% to 40% via internet and half the c300,000 UK shop fronts will close. Multi-use retail, homes, leisure, parcel collection, electric car hire, mass transit served development. Brownfield sites. The out of town shopping centre is now dying (Toys R Us etc), not just the High Street. How can we re-purpose some of those big shed type buildings in fairly strategic but often only accessible by car currently? "Brownfield sites" includes some quite modern buildings that just haven't got a use anymore.
Add in moving to green fuels on our road network and attempting to recycle (or better re-use and re-purpose) all the things we make and consume instead of throwing things away.
The future is coming. Again.