Has your parcel been excessively packaged?

Because of the comparatively low standard of the delivery services due to making the most profit by contracting the cheapest carrier in the business who “lovingly” throws your package over the garden fence when you are not in. This is after he/she has played basket ball with it in the van , dropped it 7 times , heard a breaking sound and said – gee whiz ! they sent a broken item to the customer . Before that the warehouse guy/gal has thrown the package to the delivery driver who aims for the back of the van when pitching it , but misses . Of course when leaving the door open in the pouring rain the package crumbles , he blames it on the neighbours dog peeing on it. For those that think this is all made up –think back to the delivery convos and massive complaints about the UK,s bottom two delivery services . I look forward to a well packed item and I am willing to pay extra , and do for a very well packed item, and no in this instance I dont care how many “Eco Warriors ” howl with anger .

Perhaps some companies only but their boxes in a limited range of sizes to reduce costs and storage problems. It must be very difficult when sending out thousands of items a day to package each one appropriately, conveyor belt of identical boxes, throw in the goods and fill up with polystyrene or inflated plastic bags is much easier. Not supporting excess packaging just thinking from the sender’s point of view.

Obviously some people didnt like my post so I will recount my story I posted on Which a couple of years ago . I sent for one of those single beds with the wooden slats , it arrived , the packing was soaking wet it was quite large . On opening up 2 slats were broken and part of the bed was missing . I contacted the supplier, in the south of England and he sent the delivery company back to collect it , they refused to uplift it because of the state of the packing . I said BUT thats the way you delivered it , he even photographed it and spoke to his boss by phone. I insisted on talking to the supplier owner who after hearing me sent me another bed , I asked him when are you going to collect the broken bed -his reply – its too costly to send a
man up to repackage it so KEEP IT. I used it as spares and threw the main part out . So Eco Warriors if you think I should accept rubbish after paying out good money then not only are you living in cuckoo land you are living in La -La Land and faeries live at the bottom of the garden— just to make you happy , never going to happen !

I have just bought a walking stick online. It arrived on time in a box some five inches deep and layed diagonally across the box which was approx three feet square. It was packed in paper which half filled a recycling bin in my block of flats. Thank God it was not in that gigantic bubble wrap!

This is how some milk cartons were sent:

Nicely packed and no chance of damage but………

Each carton is individually wrapped in over a metre of bubble wrap and I order 24 cartons at a time.

I am unsure whether they are manufacturer packed in 6s 8s or 12s, (I think they are packs of 6) but they have their own original packaging for protection. Removing the original packaging and wrapping each separately is slightly ludicrous.

I have a similar gripe with supermarket deliveries as they are removed from packaging and chucked in carrier bags so they arrive quite dented and sometimes leaking.

When products have their own packaging, why don’t retailers make them available in their pack size? They would save on excess packing materials, wasting original packing materials and refunds for damaged products.

Perhaps we could promote good practice. I received two packs of vacuum cleaner bags from an eBay trader. These were already sealed in plastic bags, so all the supplier had done was to wrap them in brown paper. This passed the Hermes test and meant little waste.

The reality of modern delivery systems is that goods are subjected to much more wear and tear in the depots and hubs than used to be the case. Mechanical handling has rightly replaced back-breaking manual effort and a tendency for humans to chuck things around but it has introduced its own range of problems. Stuff now goes around carousels, is conveyed on elevators and automatically sorted into bins and cages, and gets tumbled and dropped into containers on its route through the depot. And the human element has not been eliminated altogether because the driver needs to load the van and sort the contents in order of delivery. To survive all this, good packaging is essential but not always provided. Companies presumably learn from returns experience how much packaging is required needed and the mass of an object tends to determine the robustness of the packaging required. A radiator should have thick corner protectors as it will otherwise burst through any flimsy wrapping.

Another consideration is pilferage – large packaging is sometimes used to make it more difficult to conceal small items or to reveal the contents. It also stops small items from slipping through gaps in the conveyor lines or between other goods in the van.

I ordered an expensive, and rather heavy, book a few months ago and it was enclosed in the standard form of cardboard packaging with a a form of crumple zone all round the book. Nevertheless, this was still not adequate because during its journey from the supplier to me it must have had a few collisions since the outside corners on the front and back covers were deformed and some of the pages were creased as well. I did not notice this until some time after I had received it as the book’s jacket was unaffected, and since the damage was not critical I took no action. The mass of the book was out of all proportion to the protective properties of the packaging and, given the book’s price, I feel that a human would have been likely to have made a better decision on how to pack it.

I’ve just had an online discussion with John Lewis about exactly this topic. We collected, via click and collect at our local Waitrose, three photo frames which were in two medium sized boxes (they could easily have fitted in one together) and there was a lot of plastic bubble wrap around them. I recognise that the frames and glass need some protection, but I would really like companies to start thinking about using less plastic and using materials which consumers can easily recycle at home. I contacted John Lewis and the less than helpful response was ‘shop in store and don’t buy online’. Hardly helpful when we are nowhere near a John Lewis shop. This isn’t the first time we’ve thought that JL’s packaging was excessive.

Recently received a hand-tied bouquet of flowers via Interflora (ie arrived tied in a bunch in water). They were beautiful but unfortunately the experience was marred by the 3 large sheets of Interflora branded plastic wrapping which cannot be reused for anything. Some plastic is necessary to hold the water but this could have been in a smaller bag or just one sheet with tissue paper as would have been used in the past. I also suspect the ribbon used is not easily recyclable either.

Bought earrings online as a present for my wife. Came on a card, in a bag, in bubblewrap, in another bag and finally in a large box.