Just last year, over 11 million homeowners in the United States had their packages stolen, according to Business Wire. That’s more than half the population of Arizona. It’s also gift-giving season, which is the perfect time of year for robbers to steal your packages. There is a proposed solution, however, and it’s called the Amazon Key. This new Amazon product may help prevent stealing off your porch, but it might allow other problems problems arise.

The Amazon Key is a device that is installed into your door and acts as a key for Amazon delivery people. The delivery people can get into your house and deliver your package by using a special scanner with the Amazon Key that unlocks your door, according to Amazon itself. This new invention offers many benefits to Amazon Prime members, as this is only for them. It has the potential to lower the amount of package theft and allow consumers to rest easier during this busy time of year. There are many problems with this though and the upcoming one is high on the list.

Instead of package thieves stealing your package, delivery people could rob directly from your house because they have access to your home. Even though there is a camera with one of the Amazon Key packages, there is always a way they can get past that. For example, they could just disguise themselves and move the camera, that is placed inside your house, to look at another area. If they did this, they would never be seen stealing. This is one of the numerous ways the Amazon Key is an exceptionally bad idea.

If you have a pet, such as a cat or dog, the delivery person could also accidentally let them out. This could be a huge problem because an Amazon delivery person probably won’t be able to run after an escaped pet. Imagine how heartbreaking it would be if your pet bolted while you were out, and you had no way to seek out your lost family member, all thanks to the Amazon Key system. Instead, you would just watch your pet run out on a camera screen that connects live to your cell phone.

The Amazon Key is rather expensive and is priced at $249.99. We’re already paying so much for packages, so we shouldn’t have to pay that much for an invention that makes it “easier” to receive one. Overall, the Amazon Key is a great thought, but probably won’t perform very well. There is a safer and cheaper way you could protect your package, though. You could get a Package Guard, which the delivery people put your in package, in order to send you an alert on your phone when it’s delivered. If anyone takes the package without disarming the device through the app, then an alarm goes off. This device is around $90 and it’s a one time payment. This is much cheaper than the Amazon Key, and seems to be a better solution.