Reader Mark says:
I recently ordered two wooden spoons, a wooden spatula and a silicone spoon rest from crateandbarrel.com – all in the same transaction. Today I received these two big boxes! One box (10x7x20) held ONE 13.5″ spoon. The other box (13x13x7.5) held the other spoon, spatula and spoon rest.It’s obvious that all four items could have fit in the big box along with the big spoon. The amount of bubble pack, honeycomb paperpack and tissue paper was unbelievable.
Is it weird that we find this sort of hilarious? Why did someone think that all that stuff wouldn’t fit into one box? Why?
Maybe they should help Amazon pack their hard drives. Tee-hee!
More From Consumerist
-
This Guitar Center Coupon Is Great, Unless You Actually Want To Buy Anything
-
McDonald's Makes Good On Promise To Free Pigs From Crates, Announces 10-Year Plan
-
Whole Foods Warns Of Mix-Up Involving Vegan, Chicken Salads
-
Pepsi's Amp, Monster & 5-Hour Energy Drinks Under Investigation For Calling Beverages Dietary Supplements
-
Pizzeria Uno Now Offers Soups That Defy The Laws Of Physics
@heinzs: That’s not the point. These weren’t for her, she ordered them as a gift for a friend. What are you going to do, be a jerk and tell your friend, “Sorry, I know what you wanted, but I was cheap and couldn’t inconvenience myself to click a few times on Crate & Barrel so I got you these grocery store versions instead.” Someone wanted the C&B ones.
The real question here is why are you mail-ordering wooden spoons? They’re 19 for a dollar down at the Buckaroo Store.
I had once received a single SD card from NewEgg packed in a 12x”24 box and full of packing stuff (for an SD card in its plastic shell).
Heh, that’s nothing. Try ordering licenses from HP. Once a year as partners we’d get the chance to order permanent licenses for lab environments. So naturally, we’d order all of the products (never know which one you’re going to need in a year). Every single license (sheet of paper with a number) comes in about a 12x8x3in box. They then stuff these in a much bigger box (probably like 3ft^3). And there are about 16 of those boxes. All for what could have been transmitted in about a 5 page email.
A couple of years ago I got a gift card to C&B, but there wasn’t one near where I lived, so I ordered online – a vase and a set of glass mixing bowls. First shipment arrives and the mixing bowls were all majorly chipped along their rims, and the vase – which was inside its own box in the package – was cracked all the way down one side. Even with the fifteen tons of egg-crate packing material and shredded paper, the items were damaged because the idiot in the warehouse packed them along the sides of the box, with packing material shoved in the middle. So I call, they send out replacements…and the bowls are chipped even worse than the first time (the vase was okay the second time) because, again, they were jammed up against the side of the box.
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. I worked in the shipping department for a merchandising company for five years, it only takes a little common sense to package things properly…although, after reading some of the stories on Consumerist, I have to conclude that common sense isn’t all that common anymore…
@num1skeptic: Amazon or Pacific Northwest?
@uricmu: Wow. I thought Newegg packed well. Of course, if you have a problem entering your credit card number, that’s a whole different story.
@stevemis: Where every 13th spatula is free!
You guys complain about this…but have any of you worked in retail and seen how much crap the manufacturers waste shipping these items to the stores?
@xl22k:
(Not saying that this isn’t bad and unnecessary, but it’s not that HUGE a deal)
most of the stuff I get from AMZN is way overpackaged like this.
@m4ximusprim3: BWAHAHAHAHAH, you win!
To the OP, send the picture to Consumer Reports, they love to report about this on the back page of their magazine, calling it the “Golden Coccoon Award”
You all need to realize one thing
Standardized box sizes are king when it comes to shipping things, not necessarily weight. Postage for a non-standard size box that can not be handled by the post using their automated equipment can easily cost TWICE as much than it would for a smaller box that would have to be processed by hand.
How about this: It came from 2 different areas of the warehouse. Right now people are shipping things like mad, they’re trying to get things out the door at the last minute as fast as they can so that you might have it in time for Christmas…just in case.
They are also probably running low on kitchen gadgets boxes, so they grabbed the next best thing instead of back ordering your merchandise while they wait on more eco-friendly packaging.
Also? Why order something in the mail that you can pick up at ANY grocery store, Target or, God forbid, Wal-Mart? After that why don’t you bitch about receiving your purchases?
I will continue to assume whomever complained about this is a stay-at-home harpie with nothing better to do.
That’s all.
This is SOOOOOOOOOOO NOT a mystery or case of killing the trees!
You’ve never worked in a warehouse obviously. I did as a kid.
They ran out of small boxes! Simple as that. Big mystery! LMAO!
And they probably didn’t have all the spoons at one time in one place. Either at one warehouse – where they got boxed at separate times on the same day. Or two different locations. Probably the same warehouse.
Here’s how the big mystery goes down – warehouse kid gets the order, can’t find all the product so he goes to box what they do have but can only find that size box, later that day the order gets resubmitted and the same or another warehouse kid goes looking for the merchandise, he finds whats left to fullfil the order (as another group of kids are constantly unloading and restocking the warehouse shelves), but they’re still out of small boxes, so he packs that one into the same size box.
SO THAT YOU GET YOUR ORDER NO MATTER WHAT!
You got your order. It probably cost them more as the box size you paid for was smaller than what they got charged for sending.
SHEESH! Find a hobby! LOL!
Obviously, his SPOOOOOOON was TOOOOO BIIIIIIG.
Stores often have different warehouses and if a part is out of stock at one, it will ship from another. There is often an option when ordering to wait until everything is in stock before shipping that can be checked.