WOW :)

I liked those disposable Varsity fountain pens. You never see them for sale anymore.

@ChuckECheese:

Apparently, you can buy them from Sam's Club!

I think this one might win the all-time stupid shipping award?

On a side note, there's two kinds of replies I expect in the comments to this post:

"I thought Consumerist was supposed to talk about important things"
&
"Well this is the OP's fault for just ordering one pen"

C'mon Sam's Club!

It would've been more green-friendly to just throw the pen in an envelope and mail it first-class. The pen and packing slip could've both easily fit in a standard letter-sized envelope!

P.S. - nice tag about the hot dog and the hallway. Dirty!

@Moosehawk: Don't forget "Who buys pens? I make my own at home!"

This gives new meaning to the words "big box store".

+1 for the "throwing a hot dog down a hallway" tag!

I agree, these things are stupid. I bought a 12 pack of pens and got a huge box with air bubbles and whatnot as well. What a waste.

That being said, who is hurt by this, really?

If the company has no problem losing money on the deal, and they aren't even charging for shipping (coincidentally, a $.69 pen in an envelope would cost almost $.50 to mail), then why the complaints? No one writes in to complain that Comcast is giving them free Showtime, and they don't even watch Showtime! What a waste!

Excuse the pun, but this article is filler.

Moosehawk called it!

As the article mentions, this is Sam's Club. You know, the place where you buy spaghetti sauce in 55 gal. drums. The funny part is being able to buy one (1) pen from Sam's. Usually, you have to buy them by the gross or pallet.

You ever notice things don't get shipped in small boxes? There are several reasons for that. It would be dumb of me to stock small pen sized boxes. If I would have shipped your pen in a small pen sized box. The shipping company would have lost it. Then where would we be?

Please stop insulting shipping people. Yes some of it is a bad idea, but there are a lot of reasons why your item might have came in a larger box.

On a more positive note -- I bought an odometer from Amazon-proper last week and it came in a PADDED MAILER. I was shocked and amazed.

@Yoko Broke Up The Beatles: I recently got a pack at Staples!

My problem with this:

When I get a package that is larger than my apartment's mail boxes, they leave it on my steps. That is no good, as I've had things go missing that the USPS left there.

When I know it's that large, I have it shipped UPS or FedEx.

If I ordered 1 small item, logically expecting it would be in a box smaller than a stack of VHS tapes, I make my shipping arangements based on that size.

If this was a diamond ring, I'd think it would be secure in my mailbox, but instead it'd arrive in a gigantic box left out in the open.

@BartholomewPanther: This.

Stories like this are worthless because if shippers routinely did just "throw it in a first class envelope" than stuff would be disappearing all the time and we would have complaints that "cheap" companies 'OMFG dunnah evun track dere packages?!?!'

@BartholomewPanther: While a perfectly pen-sized box might be an unusual size to stock, what about a box around the size of the ones that come when you order new checks? Or a padded mailer? Or a business-sized envelope? Or even a shoebox-sized box? I believe there are plenty of options available, options I have myself received on numerous occasions from Amazon and other online retailers. To say that things don't get shipped in small boxes is, frankly a little absurd. But then again, I'm not a professional shipper like yourself. I would imagine there are all sorts of tariffs and taxes to be paid on small boxes, as a result of the deep-seated corruption of the shipping industry caused by the mustachioed corrugated mafia. I guess I should count myself lucky to live in blissful ignorance of your dark brown world.

Hell- the next time I move, instead of buying cardboard boxes, I'll just buy 20 fountain pens- 1 a day.

This happens often in my office, mostly when we order stacks of cups from Staples. If we order 5 stacks of disposable coffee cups we get five boxes with one stack in each box and fulled with air bubbles. There's plenty of room to stack other parts of our order or even more cups but it's always one stack of cups to a box.

@Caged Wisdom:

It has to be at least large enough to get the tracking sticker on it and that in itself is too small for any reliability. At first glance a padded mailer sounds like a win, but we don't use them, they themselves have troubles too. Being Sams as someone already mentioned probably did not even have a smaller sized box.

When it really comes down to it people should be happy they received their item. When in doubt I always choose a larger box. If the item doesn't get there, who's at fault. It's the seller every time. We take the heat for any lost, damaged, late items. If I shipped something in a larger box, it was for the benefit of the customer.

@Radi0logy: well, to start out with Sam's Club could ship things in smaller packages to reduce the amount of garbage in landfills. You might not be concerned with conservation and waste reduction, but there are a lot of companies and people out there that are.

Second, shipping smaller objects would ultimately save on shipping costs for Sam's. Regardless of whether or not the OP received free shipping it still costs someone to ship, and those shipping costs are all just going to passed onto the consumers in the form of higher prices.

You have to look at the big picture here, and not just how things affect you personally, but how they affect the larger picture, as well.

@Moosehawk: No, I have an even "worse" story. I wanted some cream-colored correction fluid (you know, "Wite-Out"), which isn't sold in stores. Office Depot (or Max, I forget) had a "free overnight shipping" deal with almost no restrictions.

So, I had a single bottle of cream-colored Wite-Out overnighted to me for free. It came in a box far larger than the one in the article's picture.

This happened way before all the complaining about this practice was in vogue, so I didn't take pictures or anything. Oh well...

@Yoko Broke Up The Beatles: Perhaps, but an envelope that doesn't bend is subject to a "nonmachinable" surcharge. The high-speed equiptment that sort regular envelopes jam more easily than one might think.

@Brandi Hendrix: I'm sure mother Earth appreciates your love.

There are a lot better examples of waste that you can target your green-arrows towards than an occasional case of shipping a small item in a big box. Probably hundreds of thousands of things that are better deserving of your time.

As far as passing the costs on to us goes, if you have evidence of that happening, please, inform us. As it is, you have a single item that was shipped at a cost that exceeded the cost of the item. That was their choice, they decided to lose money. If you're a shareholder, then OK, get pissed. NOT a consumer issue.

You need to look at the big picture here, and not just how things affect your narrow world-view, but the whole world instead.

@katstermonster: +2! Like feeding a tic-tac to a whale?

@takotchi: Dang! If the UPS/FED guy showed up to my door with a box that big my first thought would be "wtf did I order? Did someone send me a gift?"

Does the numbers, info, dates and all that good stuff on the packing slip match the outside of the box? I can order a crap load of stuff from sam's club, then order a pen, then take said pen and place it in saved huge sam's club box and say it was shipped like that. These stories are too easily faked.

@SacraBos: you know, that's making me think suspicious thoughts... the pen shown in the picture isn't in any kind of specific packaging and the amazon link went to a third party retailer... wonder if sam's club hired a company to sell their broken lot packages off as inidvidual items because then they make more than they would get back in credit

@AlteredBeast: what makes UPS and Fedex shipping NOT get stolen off your steps? not sarcasm, i'm curious... at my last apartment UPS delivered to the office even when i was home, so it was a very secure way for me to get packages

@BeerManMike: OP here... I included more pictures matching the order number written on the box with the packing slip, but they did not include it in the post... You can find the pic here: [img194.imageshack.us]

@BeerManMike: Why would anyone even consider faking a story like this? There's absolutely no point.

Consumerist - you said "ordered some pens" (as opposed to pen) so I can skip the "c'mon OP dude pony up for the whole box of a dozen" post, right? :-)

@Radi0logy:

I don't complain. Staples does this to me all the time at work. I just keep the air pillows and recycle them and the boxes. I've got the whole office trained to bring me their leftover boxes and packing material so I don't have to buy any. :)

I wonder whta box would come with a Penis Mightier.

@Moosehawk: I think this one is still the worst: [consumerist.com]

@catastrophegirl - just add kittens: At my last apartment there wasn't an office to have things left at. And I believe AlteredBeast meant that UPS and FedEx typically require signatures for delivery, meaning that packages won't be left on their steps.

@BartholomewPanther: When I got my iPod Touch in the mail, apple shipped it in a box that was JUST bigger than the iPod's plastic shell. It was a 5"x4"x3" box if I remember correctly.

@Brandi Hendrix: Well, even if Sam's Sent it in a smaller box, if the person does not recycle, it all ends up in landfill. Now if they did recycle, then there would be NO box in the landfill, either size. I think we should promote recycling!

@Radi0logy: you think my world-view is narrow? I think someone who doesn't understand the basic principles of the large stores. They don't lose money. If shipping costs are high the are going to pass it on to you. I never claimed there was an exact amount.

Also, don't tell me how I should spend MY tim or the things I should worry about. You have no idea anything about me, who I am or what I do.

@Brandi Hendrix:
Ugh. How I wish there were an edit button:

I think someone who doesn't understand the basic principles of the large stores is plagued with narrow thinking.

and

tim=time.

@2DaysTillTheState_GitEmSteveDave: agreed that the packaging should be recycled no matter what, but smaller packages that end up in landfills add up to less waste compared with larger packages that end up in landfills.

In a perfect world the packaging would end up being recycled, but we do not live n that perfect world.

@outlulz:
Because... because... we have to blame the OP *somehow*!!!

@Ph30nix: fedex only requires a signature when the sender requires it. they leave stuff for me all the time. usually medicine. refrigerated medicine. in full sun. sigh....

@Brandi Hendrix: After that well thought-out diatribe I have a pretty good idea about you.

I'd guess:
Sam's club doesn't have warehouses. They pay another company to drop ship their office supplies. That supplier probably has an automated conveyor in their warehouse that carries boxes from one section to another. That conveyor requires a minimum box size to operate correctly.

If you ever see one,It's rather cool the way it scans it and diverts each box to the right area to get filled and then takes it to the the right area to be palleted for shipping, all based on bar code scanners.

They make more money by keeping the line moving than by taking the time to hand pack your PIL90010 in it's own special box.