Ed ordered three big (by “big” we mean four feet by six feet) dry erase boards from Amazon.com. They came from a vendor called Shoplet. Everything seemed fine with the transaction until a mysterious box arrived on his doorstep alongside the boards. The box was tiny, unlike the boards. What was inside? Mounting hardware? Extra erasers? Free markers? No. He opened the box and was horrified at what he found inside.

He found a cardboard coupon with a code to be used online. Nothing wrong with that…except that was the only item in the box. A cardboard coupon and some air cushions to…protect the piece of cardboard?

Worse: the air balloons themselves have “EarthAware” logos on them that brag about how the pillows themselves are made from recycled plastic.

Yes, but you save even more plastic just by e-mailing this information, or sticking it in the box. “All you need for the discount is the coupon code,” Ed wrote to Consumerist. “They could have emailed that to me, or stuck this card in an envelope and dropped it off in [the] mail. Or skipped it all together as I don’t give a rip since I don’t have an account with Shoplet.com and the last thing I need is another online account.” Well, yeah, there’s that too.

We contacted Shoplet and they tracked down Ed’s order to find out what the heck happened here. No, it’s not a staged photo, as many people suggest for Stupid Shipping gang posts.

We can’t share the specifics of how this happened on the vendor’s end, but we can assure potential Shoplet customers that they’re just as horrified as Ed was at this packaging mishap, and are working to make sure it won’t happen again.

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