Silk Road forums
Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: pine on January 24, 2012, 02:29 pm
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Ohai fellow criminal masterminds! ;)
I have a great solution for certain types of buyers, or buyers in the appropriate locations.
Where I live, there exists student accommodation in the locale.
In this student accommodation a pigeon hole system is used for post.
That is:
You walk into a part of their building, and they have a series of pigeon holes with letters placed in them by the First Initial of their Surname or something very similar.
This is extremely common in flat block complexes and university student accommodation.
This only works for regular letters and magazine sized shrink wraps. But most deliveries are likely to be letter sized for buyers anyhow.
So, simply address your letter to a relatively normal sounding name at a specific apartment/room number e.g. Susan Kahneman and wait.
For some types of accommodation you'll need a small key, but getting that and making a copy isn't exactly a feat for James Bond.
You have:
:) Plausible deniablity.
:) The possibility of frequently checking the pigeon hole unobtrusively.
:) Controlled delivery is next to impossible when flocks of students back for lunch are investigating their pigeon holes.
:) You can check the schema for addressing. e.g. Check that a certain Apartment No. or Block No. or Room No. actually exists.
:) You can ensure somebody really lives at that Apartment/Block/Room, and then ensure your name you address to is different.
:) Same Name/Same Location is pretty much next to zero probability.
:) The sheer volume of mail makes it unlikely the Flat Block Complex / Student Accommodation staff are going to suspicious of your packet.
edit: Maybe "The Awesomeness of Shared Accomodation for Purchasing Mammals." was confuzling some people. Not talking about smuggling snakes onto plane here!
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Haha, this is actually a really cool and pretty great idea.
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This is actually a pretty good idea. Too bad the mail system doesn't work that way at the schools in my area :(
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maybe im not understanding 100% but it seems like there is a reasonable chance that whoevers living there will grab everything in their hole/box thing and either bin, open or mark return to sender your gear =O
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maybe im not understanding 100% but it seems like there is a reasonable chance that whoevers living there will grab everything in their hole/box thing and either bin, open or mark return to sender your gear =O
No, that's next to impossible.
You see, the pigeon holes aren't for specific apartments or dorm rooms. That's the central principal at work here. It's inefficient for each renter/student to have their own personal pigeon hole. So, all envelopes (usually not packages, those you have to sign for usually, which is not a good idea) wind up in pigeon holes according to some kind of internal addressing system. 90% of the time this is sorted by surname.
Example: All letters for 'James Anderson', 'Luke Allen', 'Mark Adams', 'Philip Alexander' etc go into the pigeon hole for 'A'.
Now, anybody can walk up to a pigeon hole and check whether mail has arrived for them. That's what makes controlled delivery improbable.
You just need to flip through a collection of letters in a pigeon hole to check that there is no name similar to the one you're going to be using in case of an accidental pickup. For surety, you should also ensure that the room/dorm/apartment no. you're addressing to, actually has a tenant (in case the post is held back by the staff, albeit that is unlikely for large blocks of flats or dorms).
Lastly; the majority of such places don't ID at the door to check that you're a student/renter at that location block of flats/apartments/dorms. The sheer volume of people makes it impracticable because people are always crowding through doorways, holding doors open for each other etc.
I wouldn't suggest you use student accommodation if you're above > 30 years old, you might be the odd one out. Similarly with < 30 for blocks of flats. Of course if you look sufficiently mature/young, it won't matter so much.
Another reason why this plan is sheer awesomesauce, is that these places where mail is collected by students, are usually open 24/7. Students are creatures of the night and renters are frequently at day jobs so it's frequently only practicable for them to pick up their post in the late evening/night/early morning.
Loopholes! Loopholes everywhere! :D
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Somebody has clearly thought through this thoroughly.