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After staying at home one afternoon for a delivery of discounted sink that never came, Valentin Romanov, a Stockholm IT manager ,installed a special lock on his flat’s entrance. When no one is in, deliverymen unlock the door and slip packages inside. Four months on, Mr Romanov has _______ his spending online and says he cannot imagine life without in-home deliveries. These are sweet words for delivery firms and online retailers(零售商), Amazon included, that are setting up_______ with lock manufacturers to overcome a big hurdle for e-commerce.

Traditional l deliveries fail so_______ that a parcel is driven to a home an average of 1.5 times in the Nordic region, says Kenneth Verlage, head of business development at PostNord, a logistics(物流) giant operating in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It is an expensive _______ made worse, he says, by the fact that recipients have still often had to wait for a failed delivery. Some couriers leave packages on doorsteps, but this_______ theft. Of 1,000 Americans surveyed this year by Shorr, a packaging firm, nearly a third had been victims of “porch piracy”, as this is known. Two-fifths_______ certain online purchases for fear of it.

A number of firms now sell wirelessly connected locks which a courier’s delivery staff can open using a passcode or smartphone app after the ________ has issued a temporary authorization, before leaving home or remotely. Deliveries are filmed with an indoor security camera paired with the lock. The short videos are sent to parcel addressees and typically ________, comically in Mr Romanov’s view, with a jiggle of the door handle from outside to show that the departing delivery person has locked up.

Amazon began offering in-home deliveries in 37 American cities in November. Shoppers who have had a special_______ and camera installed (costing $199) can select in-home delivery at checkout. Like most firms offering the service, Amazon is tightlipped about user ______. The boss of August Home, a San Francisco maker of in-home delivery locks, says that already hundreds of thousands of delivery drivers, dog-walkers, cleaners and Airbnb guests use its app______ to enter others’ homes.

Offerings are ________. In 2018 August Home will go to Australia and Britain, and PostNord will launch in-home delivery in four Nordic countries. Walmart and Sears have tried it; Sears even tested unattended appliance repairs. Five logistics firms and two Swedish supermarket chains are trying or using locks from Glue, a firm based in Stockholm, for in-home deliveries.

________ suspect these efforts will not amount to much. Plenty of _______ will be fearful about theft. Rhino Security Labs, a Seattle computer-security firm, claims it hacked into and shut off the video in one Amazon lock-and-camera system. In-home deliveries are incompatible with burglar alarms. And what if an improperly fenced-off dog or cat slips outside? Or an heirloom on display gets knocked over? These are ________ questions. But e-commerce firms have unlocked harder ones.