How to stop parcel theft in an apartment building

The lobby is the weak point. A courier buzzes whichever flat answers, leaves the parcel on the mail table at 11am, and the resident gets home at seven. For eight hours that box sits in a space anyone can talk their way into, and when it goes missing the courier's photo says 'delivered', the resident says 'not to me', and the building is left holding the argument. Multiply by a few hundred flats and a December, and parcels become a real line on the management workload.

What actually helps

• A parcel room behind a locked door, if the building has the space; getting parcels out of sight is most of the battle
• Lockers, which work well until they fill up; the overflow parcel on top of the lockers is where the thief shops
• Clear delivery instructions for residents and couriers, so boxes stop landing on the nearest flat surface
• A camera on wherever parcels actually rest, because everything above still leaves a gap between drop and collection

None of this is exotic, and none of it is complete. Even a proper parcel room has to answer 'who took the box for flat 12', and most buildings can't rebuild the lobby around lockers. The camera is the cheap part, provided the footage can actually be used rather than scrubbed through for an evening.

Put a check on the lobby camera

The Package Watch check runs on the entrance or lobby camera you already have. Because a handover and a walk-off look identical in a single image, it judges a window of recent frames together: it flags a delivered parcel left unattended in an exposed spot, and someone who doesn't appear to be staff or the recipient picking one up and walking away. One event raises one alert (the same check re-firing within two minutes is a continuation, not a new alarm), delivered on screen, by email to the building manager, or by JSON webhook into the ticketing you already run.

The other half is after the fact. A resident reports Thursday's parcel missing on Saturday, so you search instead of scrubbing: type 'person picking up parcels' over the lobby folder and get the week's matching moments with timestamps. Footage sits in nested Library folders (building, then camera), and the search bar covers the folder you're in, subfolders included. There's a fuller guide to searching hours of footage if that's the part you need.

If the question extends to the car park

Sometimes the useful question is outside: was there a van by the door at three, what left just after the parcel did. The Vehicle Log check writes a structured line for every vehicle a camera sees (type, colour family, distinguishing markings, direction, moving or parked), which turns the car-park camera into a searchable arrivals-and-departures record. It logs vehicle descriptions and activity, not number plates; there's no ANPR in Svid.

1. 01

   Cover the drop zone

   One camera that actually sees where parcels rest: the mail table, the locker overflow, the floor inside the door. An RTSP camera is captured on our side with no new hardware; a spare phone at app.svid.ai/live.html (sign in on the device first) works while you wait for the electrician.

2. 02

   Create an account at app.svid.ai

   Onboarding asks four questions (business type, what to watch for, camera count, hours a day), suggests checks and a watch level, and shows the price with its whole derivation before Stripe checkout: based on your own usage, minimum $9 a month.

3. 03

   Turn on Package Watch

   In the Store it's priced as the extra it adds at your own usage. The default Standard level (a frame every 5 seconds at 720p) suits a lobby, and motion gating means the dead hours cost almost nothing.

4. 04

   Route the alerts

   Email for the building manager, a JSON webhook for the ticketing system. One alert per event, so a busy delivery morning doesn't turn into a siren.

5. 05

   Search when a resident reports a loss

   'Person picking up parcels', scoped to the lobby folder, across the week. You get moments with timestamps, which is what the resident, the courier and, if it comes to that, the police actually need.

How does it know a parcel is being stolen rather than collected?

It judges the sequence, not a snapshot: whether the person picking the parcel up appears to be staff or the recipient, read across a window of recent frames. The footage arrives with every flag, so confirming what happened takes seconds. It flags; you judge.

Will it identify the thief?

It will describe them and timestamp them, which is what a report needs. It won't recognise faces or follow anyone across cameras; Svid deliberately has no facial recognition, biometrics or tracking.

The courier's photo says delivered. Does this help?

Yes. The photo shows the parcel arriving; the lobby camera shows what happened to it afterwards, with timestamps. That's usually the half the dispute was missing.

What does it cost for one lobby camera?

The price is based on your own usage, with a $9 a month minimum, quoted from your own profile with the arithmetic on screen before you pay. Package Watch is priced in the Store from your usage, and a lobby that's empty half the night is cheap to watch, because frames where nothing moved get no AI calls.

Can it watch the car park too?

Yes, with the Vehicle Log check: a structured, searchable record of every vehicle a camera sees, by description and movement. It doesn't read number plates; ANPR isn't something Svid does.