There is a new addition to the student center at AU, which is the Amazon package pick-up boxes located near the mail room.
The Amazon package pick-up boxes have been in the works for a while according to Safety Services Director Dave McLaughlin.
Initially, McLaughlin and Mary Bond, mail room supervisor, had both been looking since COVID-19 but could not attain the pick-up boxes at that time.
“We put them in proposals to get them, but we were never able to get them,” said McLaughlin.
The goal of putting them in during the time of COVID-19 was for contactless delivery with students and for 24/7 pick-up of Amazon packages.
Before going with the Amazon package pick-up boxes, McLaughlin investigated other vendors at the time and is still looking for vendors, believing the 42 boxes will not be enough.
The benefit of going with the Amazon boxes was there was no cost to the university and no renovations needed to be made.
“It was kind of like low cost, high reward,” said McLaughlin.
Amazon also installed the boxes on campus as a hub, which is a central point to pick up Amazon packages.
“If you’re a neighbor of Ashland University at this point, you can have them shipped here to this [hub],” said McLaughlin.
With the new boxes already installed, there have been a few packages delivery mishaps involving the newness of the Amazon package pick-up boxes.
McLaughlin thinks the main reasoning behind this is local Amazon drivers do not know that the new boxes on campus are here yet.
With the new Amazon boxes installed on campus, the main question is how does one pick-up a package from the boxes.
The process, overall, is like how one would go about receiving a package from the mail room at AU, except when ordering the package, one would select the hub location as the pick-up point.
“It’s very similar to our system where when you receive a package, you’ll get an email with the Amazon lockers,” said McLaughlin, “You’ll get an email directly from Amazon to them.”
On the email, there is a code that is used at the Amazon boxes, and once the code is put in the box will open with your package inside of it.
The mail room does not put the packages in the Amazon boxes and does not handle any of the packages in the process.
If a package is not picked up within three days, the Amazon driver takes the package back to free up the boxes. Also, if a certain number of boxes are full, the Amazon driver will only bring the number of packages that fit the boxes.
“The Amazon driver knows if there’s… only 10 available, they’re only [going to] bring 10 packages,” said Mary Bond, supervisor of the mail room.
With the new Amazon package pick-up boxes installed, McLaughlin and Bond are already looking to put in more in the future if the boxes are successful.
