Leading the stupid shipping gang takes creative incompetence, and Hewlett-Packard is clearly up to the task. Other companies might have turned to email when faced with the challenge of shipping sixteen software licenses. Not Hewlett-Packard! HP went looking for a box. A really big box, which they filled with sixteen smaller boxes, each containing two precious pieces of paper ensconced in a layer of protective foam.
Hewlett-Packard’s head of product packaging was unable to explain the odd shipping choice, as he is currently en route to St. Ives.
HP shatters excessive packaging world record [The Register]
More From Consumerist
-
Chubby Checker Suing Over Male Endowment Measuring App For Obvious Reasons
-
Sexiest CEO In America Final Showdown: Jamie Dimon vs. Meg Whitman
-
Here Are Your Sexiest CEO In America Tournament Finalists!
-
18 Heads Found In Airport Duffel Bag; May Be Completely Legal
-
FTC Goes After Marketers Hawking Natural Remedies For Bed Bug & Head Lice Problems
This is what happens when you contract out shipping to the manufacturers of matryoshka dolls.
At work we have IBM blades. Those are not installed in small quantities.
After the first time getting warranty sheets for the first bunch
packaged just like HP’s licenses, we complained to the IBM sales person.
Not only came they packed one by one in its own box, no, we also had to
fill them out and send back or fax them back. They they were stamped by
IBM and sent/faxed back.
Sales told us about “different department…done not in sales…” etc.,
we told them “we don’t care, big IBM can surely do something about
this, right?” and they could: sales talked to the warranty team, so the
latter sent their sheets (in whatever form) to the sales department,
sales filled them out (they knew serial number, who we are, and where
they sent he blades), and then they sent us one pack of stamped warranty
sheets back. One envelope. Hand packed.
So it is possible with asking nicely and especially if sales might lose
a customer about such a minor issue.
You know everyone complains about stupid shipping like this but maybe we shouldn’t. At least you got the package and nothing was broken. Maybe we should start posting every time someone orders something and they end up with a box of broken junk. If thats the way hp needs to ship it, who cares. You get it, it’s not broken, it’s not lost, what’s the big problem ? I love the consumerist but sometimes it just feels like some of you were that kid that sat in the back of the class complaining about everything and never just accepted it for what it was. Theres plenty of people getting ripped off way harder out there than overkill shipping gangs. If anything else you got some boxes you can use to ship other stuff.
I formerly worked for an HP reseller. This is not only very inefficient, its incredibly annoying. We would get free licenses every year for every product in the line… one per office. So we’d get 16 HUGE boxes packaged like the above.. Huge box, lots of little boxes, lots of pieces of paper, one useful number on the pieces of paper.
BTW @donkeyjote, did you know anyone can now to go webware.hp.com and use your license? Probably not a good idea to post that order number across the internet…
@z4ce: That image is from the HP site. It won’t work to generate licenses.
@Gilbert: My thought was that the workers who actually put the packages together have to do it according to policy.
Then again, maybe they just thought it was funny.
Perhaps a disgruntled employee. Reminds me of a story that a coleague of mine told. His former employer was shutting down the local offices/facility and was transfering everything to CA. The bosses told the workers (who knew they were getting laid off) to “PACK UP EVERYTHING and put it on the trucks for shipment cross country” So they packed up all of the equipment, furniture, a full machine shop, and then went out back and boxed up thousands of pounds of rocks, put them on palates mixed in with the items that were really supposed to go and put them on the truck.
We get something nearly as bad… We have been receiving 10 computers a week
for the last couple of months, each of those computers comes with a 19″ LCD,
the LCD comes with DVI/VGA & USB cables. We don’t bother plugging in the DVI
or USB cables and just leave users with VGA. Additionally, we get a second
DVI cable, that comes in its own box with warranty information and foam
packaging.. We have just been throwing the DVI cables into a box, and now
easily have about 150+ in a couple of boxes, and using the packaging to
resend other stuff at work.
4 words.
Are you shitting me?
There is a bunch of retardation on HP’s part here:
1) HP probably saved a couple of thousand in programming by routing paper only deliveries through the standard computer ordering system. But they probably waste that in shipping charges every 2 or 3 months with stunts like this.
2) These paper licenses? They mean NOTHING. If you get busted for piracy the only proof of ownership that matters is actual paid invoices. Your IT department could track every little piece of paper they get shipped but if your accounting systems are a mess you’ll still get fined. HP could just e-mail a damn PDF with the number of licenses purchased on it and be just as well off.
@FLConsumer:
No way, this guy must have a buttload of degrees attached to his name beyond the age-old Piled Higher and Deeper
That’s just good manners. Sending things in such a luxurious way. And you people are complaining.
I would like it if people with these boxes could send me them, because I’d like to use these for a Metal Gear Solid live-action parody.
@Turtlestack:
That’s gotta be it.
18 boxes, actually — look carefully at that outer big box, and it actually appears to be two smaller boxes taped together.
As an HP dealer I can assure you that nothing that company does makes sense. They are out to skin everyone for every last cent they possibly can after reducing their staff to nothing.
If they gave a crap about their customers, dealers or employees someone would have figured out that its cheaper and easier to email a license then print it, throw it in a big box and ship it UPS. And if there was any doubt, they already handle their EXTREMLY profitable Care Paqs that way so the mechanism is already in place.
If they could figure out a way to email their tiny little $30 ink cartridges I assure you they would (hell… they almost can)
Kudos to the genius who figured out this system to screw the company over just a little the way they’ve treated everyone else.
The answer of it being an almost entirely automated system is the only way I can think of explaining this one. The fact they’re in neoprene-padded boxes in the first place rather than envelopes is a little excessive, but if you just received one you probably wouldn’t think too much of it as it’s not an outside box. And it’s not possible to accidentally tear the document if you’re careless opening the box, as you may with an envelope.
The things to be shipped were probably picked just by their index number, possibly even by an automated system, and the workers sticking them in the big box to be sent out would neither known nor cared exactly what it was they were putting in the big double-box (which probably seemed like a more reliable and efficient way of getting all 17 of these things to their destination at once, instead of possibly having them split to seperate consignments in two normal-sized boxes), and may have ended up catching holy hell should they have looked inside, seen it was just paper, and gone off to get something with which to send the 50-odd sheets more sensibly.
My laptop is an HP, and it came in a very efficient box that was just about large enough for it and it’s carefully arranged accessories (battery, tablet stylus with lanyard & spare tips, power transformer & leads, recovery CDs and a minimalist owner’s manual) to fit with some thin but effective padding. I don’t think they’d waste resources thoughtlessly like that, and if you were ordering a site license in a more normal way would probably just send a single, bespoke document through in an envelope.