Turns out that the good folks at Amazon are doing more than just developing hyperintelligent robots who will eventually enslave you. In their neverending quest to find new and unique ways of bringing your purchases to you, the company has been experimenting with unique delivery options. Last year we learned that “Amazon Key” was allowing delivery people to come inside your home to drop off packages. (Because, after all, people who rise to the level of package delivery agents are generally beyond reproach in terms of reliability.)

But simply rifling through your living rooms still didn’t provide the full range of flexible delivery options people were looking for. Now, to make life even more convenient, certain Amazon Prime members will be able to have someone show up wherever you parked your car, unlock it, and put the delivery in the back seat or the trunk. (Associated Press)

Amazon’s latest perk … free delivery to your car.

The Seattle company on Tuesday began offering delivery in 37 cities to Amazon Prime members who own newer General Motors or Volvo vehicles. The company will expand the number of locations as well as eligible vehicle makes and models going forward…

The in-car delivery service is available to members of Amazon Prime whose cars are parked in publicly accessible areas, such as on the street in front of an apartment building, at a workplace parking lot, or in a driveway. Amazon won’t deliver to a private parking garage or other places where access to a vehicle is not readily available. Packages are placed in the vehicle’s trunk or out of plain sight.

You know, there’s a part of me that definitely understands why some people are concerned about not only timely deliveries of purchases but also theft prevention. Clever thieves have figured out that those Amazon boxes often contain valuable goodies and if one shows up on your porch while you’re at work during the day it’s a tempting target. That became a serious problem during Christmas season this past winter, with the media dubbing the perpetrators “porch pirates.”

But how far are we willing to go as we accept the theft of our mail and parcel delivery as a feature of modern life? Your home is your castle (be it ever so humble) and having a stranger prowling around in there when nobody is home seems to be something we adapted to awfully quickly. And now we’re going to let them show up and pop open our cars to leave packages for us? How tight is your schedule that you couldn’t wait for the parcel until you got home?

The good news is that all of this is still optional. You don’t have to allow Amazon’s delivery services (or their robots) into your house. And you don’t have to let them root around in the trunk of your car. But I’m guessing that plenty of you will. We’re being conditioned to accept this as the new normal. But the problem is that criminals always figure out ways to exploit new developments and we’re always playing catch-up with them. Just as the porch pirates learned to follow around UPS trucks, what options will clever thieves think of with this new service? It seems like it’s only a matter of time before someone realizes that stealing brand new cars pays a lot better than dropping off Amazon boxes in them.

But hey… don’t let that stop you. Having that package in your hands the moment you reach the parking lot instead of waiting until you get home might make all the difference in the world.