Why do people not care about their packaging?
 

I am so sick of this happening to me lately. I ordered something from Japan, worked really hard to get the gift cards for it because I couldn't afford it otherwise. Brand new in box, but it arrived in a damaged box. It was wrapped in a thin layer of paper, that was all between it and the mailing box. No bubble wrap, padding, air bags, nothing. So when the mail box got crushed, the packaged box got crushed, too.

If I'm paying nearly 70 dollars for something, heck, if I'm paying 5 dollars for something new in box, why does no one care to package it so it arrives safely? I keep my stuff new in box, I don't want to take it out, and I don't care what others do with their stuff, take it out if you want, that's neither here nor there, but I don't want to take it out of box. You can get six feet of bubble wrap for less than a dollar, blow up zipper bags yourself, but I'm seriously sitting here crying because I'm so pissed and upset.

You would think so, right? If you're a business, especially if you're trying to start a new eBay or Amazon store, you would think that people would be considerate of how they pack something. I take good care in it. I would expect no less of others. It's not that expensive to get bubble wrap. Heck, I keep any bubble wrap I get as long as I don't tear it.

one time I ordered a card game for my dad for christmas, it was a limited edition version and it came in a fancy metal tin. When the thing arrived, the shrink wrap around the tin was torn and the metal was dented in several places, I was very disappointed. Luckily, I was able to return it. I just went into a game store and bought one off the shelf, I didn't trust Amazon to ship it after that nonsense.

I can't really walk in to a store and buy this, I don't usually like to order online for this reason, but some things only come from Amazon or eBay. Amazon this year has been godawful, every order I had trouble with, and I've never had much trouble before.

I guess I'm going to have to start messaging people and asking how they plan to pack it.

Amazon is GREAT about packing stuff when they fulfill orders themselves. But not everything sold through Amazon is shipped by Amazon. You learn to keep an eye out for that.

Amazon can be horrible about packing stuff. Like my drying rack for clothes? Dented as hell....no padding at all just in a box. I looked at the box and knew it was dented already. Amazon gave me a complete refund and let me keep the damaged thing to do what I will with it. I paid too much to get something that dented, you know?

But normally, they're pretty good.

I know, there's no reason to pay out of your butt, or wherever your money comes from, to get something dented to hell and back.

Amazon's A-Z guarantee program is good stuff, and all the more reason to go with fulfilled-by-Amazon purchases -- they DO make it right if your order isn't perfect.

So, slightly tangential story:

My mom decided to send me a cardboard box full of winter clothes and whatnot, because I didn't have space to haul everything with me at the start of the semester (this was last year). She mails it over, and I'm just waiting on that package for quite a few weeks. Which is...odd, because normally, it should have arrived in a max of two weeks.

Around a month and a half later, I finally get an email from the uni mailroom announcing that I've a package to pick up, and I manage to loop in a friend of mine to help me carry it (I didn't know how heavy it was). So, I peer into the room, and realize that there...aren't any reasonably-sized cardboard boxes. Weird.

And then my friend pipes up, "Um. ...Is it the squishy one?"

Turns out, I have only vague ideas of what my box had been through, but whatever it was, it came out looking less like cardboard and more like a pillow. Fortunately, the majority of its contents were jackets.

Carrying it back up to my dorm was...a rather interesting experience.

The one time I filed A-Z guarantee they still didn't settle in my favor, and I paid for a new 3DS XL, got a used one.

How does that even happen, Espy? Like how do you get this smooshed mess, which even though it was clothing, still really shouldn't have happened? I bet there was clothing everything on the way back.

I have a friend who sells stickers, keyrings etc, and she says it's mostly to save money <.< she uses carton from beer packs, hahaha. I don't think any of her orders arrived damaged, but she said she might add a special package option to her stuff. I'll ask her about bubble wrap though, because she said all packaging items were expensive.

I kind of understand that, but if you're selling something, especially something expensive, wouldn't you want to pay a little more for padding or bubble wrap instead of having a pissed off customer? Not to mention you package it well and it doesn't arrive damaged, and you have more of what I want (or in some cases willing to make custom items), you can bet I'll come back. If my item winds up damaged, then I'm not coming back. I do appreciate an input from a seller, but I still don't get it.

The "package pancake" I'd think would come from an object heavier than the package below it can handle being put on top of said package. Or, if you put 10 boxes of clothes on top of one another, the bottom one will collapse.

Hey, at least it wasn't a hungry Fed Ex or Customs employee deciding to eat all the food in a package. A person stole a box of homemade cookies I sent Lauv.

Customs inspectors in many places are super corrupt like that and they can get away with it. :/

dude, i only just got a letter (A LETTER)today and it had rips on both ends and looked like it had gotten stuck in something hella dirty and i have gotten many a package in the same condition, two different people from different companies sold me diorama kits and both times they came unpadded, in mushed up boxes with the contents broken. it's pretty messed up


also, the beer carton girl is an asshole. first it is super unprofessional to wrap a product in trash, second it's really unhygienic and third if there is any liquid on the carton the package can actually be removed from shipping and either held indefinitely or sent back. alcoholic things technically cannot be sent through the mail(in fact many things cannot be sent through the mail and it does not take much to have a package pulled)and if a worker smells booze it's out


one time though i won an auction on ebay and the creep sent my stuff packed in trash. i was so fucking mad too, one of the packing bags was from a used raw-meat bag!

dude, I think you're overblowing the beer carton thing. It's just reusing cardboard, it's actually a very responsible and green thing to do.

it's really not, it is both legally unsafe and notably unclean. there are better ways to recycle than to insult your customers and take a dice-roll on them not getting what they paid for

Sounds like the letter might have gotten stuck in a machine? But I think raw meat packaging takes the win. Or loss.

maybe but it kind of looks like a crushing XD i get soooo much mail it's started getting kind of easy to see how a thing got damaged XD to be fair i am also mildly obsessed with mail in general and can get up to two dozen parcels/letters in a month, hahahaha


dude, yeah. i have seen a lot of packing of varying levels of disregard but that is the first time since 2008 that i have ever gotten legitimately angry about it(i was shaking i was so mad). i have been grossed out, disgusted, irked, and confused but never angry XD i wrote /such/ a long letter to the person who sent it about safety and hygiene and respect for the customer

dude, it's cardboard. Just because it held bottles or cans of alcohol does not mean it's unclean or illegal.

as with all things that contain or have contained consumables there is a chance that spillage can occur, if anything spills on the carton(either before or after buying) it can soak into the cardboard and will retain an odor and possibly staining. should this material have an odor and someone during the shipping process smell that odor there will be a problem given that sending alcoholic things IS illegal, the person pulling cannot see that the package is just packed with trash that happens to smell alcoholic and so for the sake of safety and legality it has to be taken off and since they will not open the package except in very rare cases they will not know what is in it.

Well yes. IF there was a spill. But under normal circumstances... they don't spill. The whole point of the box is to protect the contents from getting damaged. Most liquor boxes of sufficient strength to use for shipping are discards from liquor stores, who empty the contents out into their refrigerators for sale and then give away the now-empty boxes for people to use. Considering the whole point is to SELL the contents to consumers, the bottles/cans inside should never be getting opened anywhere close to the box in the first place.

I mean, yeah, if the box came from someone who drinks so much as to buy bottles of vodka by the case, then I might be worried about spills. But that's... really pretty rare.

Also, it's not illegal to ship alcoholic things via FedEx or UPS or other shipping companies. It's only illegal to ship them via USPS. And USPS won't let you ship stuff with exposed inaccurate labels ANYWAY and they will (or at least they're supposed to) insist that you wrap it in paper or cover the labels with a marker or with opaque tape. (You don't even have to conceal the fact that it's a liquor box. You just have to cover up the part that says what's inside the box.) And that part of the law has nothing to do with it being alcohol and everything to do with accurate information.

Using a liquor box isn't even a social comment about the sender being an alcoholic. My MOM uses liquor boxes and she's a veritable teetotaler.

So... don't slam on a free source of environmentally-responsible packaging just because it's related to booze. Would you rather that cardboard end up landfilled or inefficiently recycled?

Upgrading any packing is not cheap. I get annoyed if stuff is under-packed, but so far the only issue I've had was a rack from Staples, which Staples promptly replaced (that was some hard metal to dent so I'm not surprised they didn't put much packing around it).

Bubble wrap means extra volume on the item, which can mean a bigger box, which can mean more postage, which is not really a problem you can expect shipping costs to go up. That's just the way it is. I did supplies for the tiny law firm I worked at for a time and we we sent out so much mail that even the few dollar cost difference between sticky strip envelopes and the envelopes you have to lick was worth paying attention to.

Never had an issue with Amazon, but then I've never ordered anything that wasn't labeled "Prime" for potentially that reason.

I get that it costs money, trust me I sat and watched this go down to a semi decent price, but I still don't get why you can't spend a bit more to have a perhaps a happy, repeat customer over negative feedback, an angry customer, filed claims, refunds, etc.

I ordered one of those air purifiers for mom for her bday, I waited 2 weeks after i ordered it before contacting the store i bought it from. When i never got a response, a week after that (3 weeks after purchasing) I filed a complaint (A-Z thing) with amazon and got a full refund.

Other then that, my only problem is with customs. Ordering stuff not sent from with in the USA.. er the 48 states that are all clustered together.. Customs always opens the package and takes stuff out and messes up the outter box before repackaging things and sending it on its way. I was surprised my box of beanie babies from my friend in canada wasn't opened ._. if it was, they did a good job repackaging it.

i've been living with my motherinlaw for a year now and have never had usa in-country stuff opened

No, no, you guys don't get it. The box wasn't just /flattened/. It was only still vaguely box-shaped by virtue of it having corners to begin with. The texture of the "box" by the time I got it was as if you took a piece of paper and wrinkled it around in your hands for five minutes straight.

I kind of want to see that. I kind of have an idea in my head, a pretty much crumpled, accordioned box, but how is that even possible?

I get the description. It's more like a overstuffed bag made of paper than a box at that point, because the corrugation got crushed and so the cardboard lost its stiffness.

Could have something to do with customs, but the last time I got something from Japan [a bunch of mini-figures from animes that I bought to give out at Christmastime a couple years ago] - they arrived ONLY in a bag marked 'fragile', and three were broken. The seller said that she couldn't be responsible for what happened off her property, but yeah. I agree.

Customs kind of feels like an excuse. So does padding making it heavy and more expensive. I get it, not knocking anyone saying so, but I don't see why a little extra care isn't hard.

I'm still upset about her, I had my sister put her away in her room so I don't have to look at her. I've considered reordering, but I don't want another bad experience, and I really hate the idea of messaging every seller to find someone willing to ship with care.

Well, could you repair her, and/or sell her to someone who repairs them? You might get an even trade, or a step-up trade. I know a couple of people who have done that with poorly-shipped products. Mostly appliances, but there's got to be a market for other things like that.

I've never heard of anything like that, but it's pretty neat to know. There's no fixing her box.

Basically that. It was...pretty pathetic to behold, to be quite honest. Hilarious in hindsight, but not so amusing at the time.

You know, you could argue why don't post office workers (or whatever company is delivering and all that) take enough pride in their work to ensure it gets their safely...

I mean, I've had stuff like Magic the Gathering cards...they put it in a cheapo protector and just send it like a letter....and I get it without the envelope even being torn....which when one came late, it surprised me that it wasn't damaged.

Anyway, depending on what damaged your order....packaging may not have saved it anyway.

My brother bought some truck parts not too long ago that came in some really weak packaging. So weak that the parts actually ripped out of the packaging itself. When it arrived to our house, there was a bag inside with a note from the post office saying 'Delivered with no content' and a giant hole within the packaging. -w- Luckily, the place that my brother ordered from understood and were really kind. They ended up sending him another order free-next day shipping in better packaging.

I bought expensive perfume once via mail. Never again! It arrived in glass shards and an out of this world scent. At least my mail smelled good, lol.

It's actually ILLEGAL to ship glass containers full of liquids through the US mail. If someone did that instead of shipping UPS/FedEx Ground, then they did something they shouldn't have.

If they sent it UPS Ground or FedEx Ground, then there should have been insurance on the shipment and you could file a claim for reimbursement.