Buy.com Ships Four Hard Drives In Four Over-Sized Boxes
Steven at The Jewish Channel ordered four hard drives from Buy.com, and got them, along with a packaging surprise. The packaging was very excessive. Each hard drive came in its a separate packing box 4591.75 cubic inches larger than the hard drive box it was meant to contain. In addition, that extra dead space was taken up by what amounted to a waterfall of brown packing paper. The containers, measuring 24" x 18" x 11.5" could each have held six of the 10.75" x 7" x 5" boxes. More pix inside. Steven writes:
[All the boxes] have the same "from" address...there was only one packing slip, in one of the boxes, and it says they all came from the same dock...At UPS.com, if you calculate the shipping cost of the same weight, but the hard drive's dimensions instead of the box's dimensions. You get $8.06 for the smaller, $12.42 for the larger. So, at regular rates, that means $17 was lost by buy.com that didn't need to be
If they'd shipped all four in one box, it would've cost $12.42. So that'd a savings of $37.20 versus what they paid. And those savings could've been passed on to me. I could've paid $9 less per hard drive.
It's hard to imagine that any reasonable estimate of the extra time and effort it would take to box these more efficiently could add up to anything close to the amount they spent shipping these items inefficiently. It's clear to me, as a consumer, that I could've been charged noticeably less for the same product, if the retailer had simply packaged these with a bare minimum of attention paid to avoiding waste. This means that retailers, in not addressing waste, are telling consumers that the bottom line doesn't matter, and that prices are noticeably inflated as a result — due to simple lack of effort and planning.
Silly, silly, planet-killing shippers. Though, HP still takes the cake for shipping 32 sheets of paper in 17 boxes.
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Comments:
You could build one hell of a cardboard fort with that stuff, complete with brown paper moat.
Were the hard drives all shipped from the same location? Plus I doubt buy.com pays the same as a normal customer. And who knows maybe buy.com gets discounts when there are less damage claims. So over packaging could be saving the customer money.
I'm not so sure. For the 10.75" dimension, there would be room for only 2.5" of padding. For the 11.5" dimension, only 1.5" of padding. For the 7" dimension, 4" of padding (which is proably good enough).
I think its good thing that the hard drive is isolated from the exterior sides of the box - you know, in case fork lift prongs pierce the box and intrude inside an inch or two
I'm thinking of the Dell laptop shipping boxes whose inserts provide for 6" of space surrounding the interior box that the laptop is in - I think this is a good idea
After getting signed up for some monthly-fee online shopper club (apparently an opt-out that I forgot to uncheck when I started my buy.com account), I refuse to buy anything at buy.com ever again, no matter how good the deal is.
In case people don't know, shippers are charged the prices the OP lists above by UPS. However, if you are a account holder who does a good amount of shipping, UPS takes a portion of the bill off, so you pay less than what they charge you. When I worked in a mailroom, we would back charge the other departments what our UPS computer printed out as the cost, but what we actually had to pay UPS was WAY lower. So yes, they could have saved, but not as much as is stated.
That being said, there is really no reason for it to be boxed so few to a box. Even two boxes per box would have been better. I will gladly take that extra paper off you for my fire pit/barrell.
At least they sent it.
Buy.com gets different rates than you or I. There's no way they paid $17 more to ship it that way.
I'd say break them down and stash them.
Always nice to have boxes if you or someone you know is moving, or needs to ship something...
Step one... cut a hole in the box(es)
Step two... put your junk in the box(es)
Step three... make her open the box(es)
@HurtsSoGood: Customers are free to not do business with a retailer for any reason -- from good ones such as the retailer ripping the customer off or screwing up the customer's order, to silly ones such as the customer not opting out and opt-out.
I doubt Buy lost any actual money on shipping that stuff. I think businesses that ship stuff in high volume just pay a flat rate, or a heavily, heavily discounted rate. The rates on UPS.com are retail quotes.
I once got a CD from Amazon.com that was strapped to the bottom of a box that was approximately 15x10x6. can't remember if there was other packing or not, but I want to say no.
@rinse: first of all what exactly does "the customer not opting out and opt-out" mean. Secondly, I try to avoid patronizing businesses that try to piggyback services by making them opt-out. There are enough businesses that allow me to buy only what I actually want to buy, that I don't bother with the ones that make me go through extra work like opting-out to not buy products or services I didn't want in the first place. Opt-out services/products are ESPECIALLY aweful when hidden in fine print.
My favorite packing method is having the fragile component touching the bottom of the box with all the packing material on top.
But think of the happy cats who would love to play/tear apart those boxes.
I am cautiously waiting for the Consumerist.com post that states.
Too Little Packaging used for four hardrives!
And shows four harddrives in one box with minimal packaging and a damaged hardrive
Buy.com probably over-paid for shipping, but since it is buy.com, there's a high probability that Steven here *didn't even pay* for shipping. He is, of course, applying the over-simplistic calculus that says "any sort of abstract savings of any kind can and should magically be assigned back to me".
What's even better is that he's from the "jewish channel", and his complaint is not about the gas guzzling, tree killing business of shipping things, but the $8/hdd that should still be in his pocket. That's comedy to me, but I'm sure someone will find that offensive.
Obviously, Buy.com's "prices" factor in shipping somehow, since it has to be paid for, but the much more logical answer is that in most cases you pay a 'flat rate' for shipping. If you live near Buy.com's depots, you are getting slightly over-charged every time. If you are on the other side of the country, you are getting a deal each and every time.
So, bad shipping + dumb customer = ??? There is no conclusion. Life is like that sometimes.
So does anyone know why this is always happening...I assume its just simply cheaper somehow....any thoughts?
Nothing to see here. C'mon, one of the biggest complaints on NewEgg's customer reviews is that multiple hard drives are shipped in the same box. This leads to the drives doing some heavy bouncing and a large amount of failures. Quite a few people have resorted to ordering multiple drives individually so they are shipped one at a time. Kinda a no-win situation for buy.com, if they would have shipped them in one box, the folks who complained would just be changed their title to "Buy.com sent all my harddrives together and they were all damaged."
To be fair, I was in bizarro-world today and had a decent experience with buy.com.
The webcam I ordered (through Amazon, stupidly not noticing it was actually buy.com) was backordered, but when I finally got it today it was in a properly-sized box.
And then! FedEx took the box, put it in a plastic bag, and hung the bag off my doorknob so it wouldn't be in the snow. I almost fainted in shock at such nice treatment of my package. My stoop doesn't even have snow on it!
As stated above, big shippers get HUGE discounts from FedEx/UPS.
A friend of mine who works for a company that does a lot of shipping says they pay less for next day delivery than the cost of ground.
None the less, there is still money, time, gase and materials to be saved by shipping things properly.
[All the boxes] have the same "from" address...there was only one packing slip, in one of the boxes, and it says they all came from the same dock...
First line says they did.
I work for a large chain electronics store (radioshack), and I've seen packing worse then that. i.e. boxes as big if not bigger with 1 thumb drive in them. Granted, I'm sure buy.com is like us and pays flat rate shipping. Still, it's kindof an inside joke at The Shack.
As a reminder that Buy.com and Amazon.com often outsource the drop ship.
Anyway to post the FROM label to determine who sent it? It will say Buy.com but the address will be a clue as to what reseller under the Buy.com name shipped it.
@jag164: I had to RMA some drives from NewEgg last year, and using approved packaging was a PITA, since they didn't use proper packaging to begin with.
Bulk shipping is absolutely possible. Look at those OEM 20-drive boxes. Box, foam insert with hard drive sized cutouts each positions like an inch and a half away from each other and three inches from the walls of the box.
For one or two, check this out: [www.hitachigst.com]
I wish a retailer would ship these things properly. I hate paying the $50 "Retail box" upgrade per drive to make sure I get them all in one piece.
When I ordered my refurbished iPhone from AT&T's online store they TWICE sent me a priority envelope with nothing inside except what seemed to be a receipt and an AT&T plastic bag, the kind I would have carried my iPhone home in if I had bought it at a store. I was so bewildered and the only answer I got from customer service was that they were backordered and my phone finally did come. I guess AT&T really wanted me to have the complete shopper's experience, bag included.
exactly. Most buy.com stuff ships from Ingram Micro, which does fulfillment for a lot of resellers. That looks like Ingram Micro packaging.
Maybe they prepacked all the drives and were just slapping shipping labels as they were ordered...
Best Buy shipped a hard drive to me in the exact same way... It was dead on arrival because the packaging was inadequate. Bastards!
Last time I checked the pricing on corrugated boxes wasn't dropping, nor was freight. I also know that kraft paper has increased in pricing as well. I can't imagine that shipping the four boxes out this was cost effective for buy.com in the slightest.
Granted, a company like Buy likely has negotiated terms with the likes of UPS and FedEx that would counter-act most stupidity down in shipping. I just cannot believe that anyone would see this as "OK". All that kraft paper - wasted. Larger boxes that could have gone for larger items - wasted.
Sometimes the shipping rate goes up not because of the weight but rather because of the odd sizing of a package - the larger size could have potentially inflated the shipping cost more than one might realize.
Oh well - in the end the consumer was taken care of albeit for more than what it was worth.
Your first mistake was to pay for shipping at all.
Sucker.
What yo do is, sell 4 items on EBAY and ship them using those 4 boxes. You observe the law of conservation that way and your freakin house doesn't get cluttered with too much crap.
I don't have a problem with that packaging, except I'd prefer soft foam protecting the drive rather than crumpled up paper.
I do like my HDDs to be well-protected during transit. They are very delicate to heavy-duty handling by couriers. If they couldn't survive a 30m drop from a conveyor belt and have the HDD not be subject to heavy G-forces, then the packaging has failed. Ship HDDs like delicate china, I say.
My company subs all our shipping to a local company which hires handicapped individuals. I guess our shipping costs about 30 percent of what it would cost to do in house. The company we use does shipping for about 40 different companies, in some cases acting as a regional warehouse. The shipping labels have our return address on them so it is invisible to the receiver.
Agreed, it's wasteful. However, I wonder if there was an option the consumer could have chosen, to bundle them all together? Sometimes, at Amazon, when buying multiple items, you can choose to wait until they are all ready, and package them together, or you can choose "Ship items as they become available." The latter means you get at least one thing fast, but they each come separately.
1. only order with free shipping from buy.com 2. never had a bad shipment from buy.com 3 the hard drives are retail packaging and are packaged inside the WD boxes with proper insulation. 4 Check the prices on those boxes at office supply stores, save them for future use, i have about 10 HD boxes Heading to buy.com now
Sigh ... if you packed 4 hard drives they way they were packed in the second picture, you would likely have some dead hard drives.
Web retailers are in a quandary here. A hard drive could be DOA from the manufacturer, and DOA from handling at their location from rough handling in packing, and DOA from shipping. That's 3 different potential places at fault, but only the web retailer is there to take the blame. The return rate from DOA hard drives will disproportionately fall on them. I do not blame them for overpacking.
And this method of overpacking is also in part due to the environmentalists. Jamming some crumpled paper into a box is a very substandard shock absorber. Fill it with the necessary peanuts and the community is outraged.
It's really a no win situation and this is all they can do.
(NOTE: I do not work for a retailer, nor have I ever. I am a consumer, and always disheartened when I order a hard drive and it come in crumpled paper.)
"And those savings could've been passed on to me. I could've paid $9 less per hard drive."
Ha. What you really mean is that they would have charged the same price, paid less for the shipping, and made an extra $9/drive in profit.
This was stupid of them to send those drives in such large boxes but, I don't understand what the big deal is that merits being mentioned here. I see these stories on Consumerist all the time. If the recipients of these shipments are so concerned then, why don't they just recycle the darn boxes or, keep them for storage? I have a lot of shipping boxes that I keep for eBay sales or storage... whatever. In the end, I'm not that concerned about paper boxes. What does concern me are all of the supermarkets that use plastic bags. Have you noticed how most cashiers don't seem to know how to fill up one of those bags and avoid using more than what is needed?
@jurijuri: what you dont know is that the delivery guy threw the package at the door and it just so happened to end up on the door knob
Because he's from the Jewish Channel, maybe someone in the Buy.com shipping office thought it wasn't kosher to ship it in just one box.
He thought some were milchek & some were fleischek & couldn't go in the same box.!
And let's not all huffy & disenvowel me, I'm also Jewish!
At least the packing material is recyclable. I hope Mr. Weiss didn't get hit with four separate shipping charges, though.