What a perfect solution for peer-to-peer delivery and selling/buying stuff from craigslist! Amazon may have their lockers, but there's plenty of room for this take on use cases that Amazon wont (yet) - run fast!!! :)
I don't think this is viable for Craigslist style transactions, meeting in person lets you verify the listing is what you expected and still leaves room for haggling if necessary. Picking up from a locker would require complete trust in the vendor and leave little room for recourse if something went wrong.
This could still be good for small transactions, Craigslist is just too small.
It may be possible to reduce some of the risk with escrow tied to locker opening and probably with added ID requirements and maybe recording of locker contents.
Which adds complexity. The CL model works as it's requirements are so simple, two humans that:
- Can communicate in the same language
- Can use a web browser
- Are able to make transactions of some kind (cash, check, Square, barter, CL doesn't care about the specifics)
Which makes their available market a rather large majority of the entire population of the Internet. Each extra restriction or requirement makes it less likely a given person will get involved.
Be very careful about "innovating" away simplicity.
