How big is your box?

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Maybe for the festive season we could have a fun competition to find the biggest most inappropriate box containing the smallest item.

I will start with the masters of overkill, Amazon and this fine piece of environmentally friendly packaging, couldn't they just have posted the cardboard tube?

Big Box.jpg
 
I once had a pack of 4 pens delivered in a similarly sized box. They would have stuck it in a jiffy bag and it would have been fine.
 
Again from Amazon, and a similarly sized box a few years ago for a single 512mb flash drive. :D
 
It's probably the smallest box they do! If they put it in a jiffy it would go as a letter and you'd moan if it got squashed!
 
Mark twiglet said:
It's probably the smallest box they do! If they put it in a jiffy it would go as a letter and you'd moan if it got squashed!
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It's a solid cardboard tube, had a new shower door seal delivered in something very similar a couple of weeks ago minus the additional box.
 
But the muppets in packing don't know that rubber is different to crystal cut glass decanters to get broken
 
Dabs used to be awesome at this. I've had SD card sized items arrive in an A4 sized box before now. Amazon are amateurs.
 
Blimey that's a cracker.. Humans seem to be one of the only living things that like to screw themselves. A bit like a dog who eats his own legs. :S It's a shame the planet is doomed, it's a nice place too.
 
I quite like lots of packaging, i reuse it for my own sales on ebay and stuff :-)
 
Cleaned the thread to bring it back to the fun thread it was meant to be. Let's keep it that way, shall we?
 
I think this gem from H Lehmann has to be seen to be appreciated.

On the left, behold the packaging. It's a triple walled corrugated box, stuffed with foam chips, scrunchy paper, bubble wrap, you name it. Dimensions 315mm x 275mm x 110mm.

On the right, behold the payload. It's a mode dial cap for a Canon 6D. Diameter 20mm, thickness 1mm. Though in fairness there were actually two of them.

FB_IMG_1480577696333.jpeg
 
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They don't make a box big enougg for me.... I have to glue 2 together..... Oh wait, wrong box...

Like others here, I ordered 2 DVDs and a pen set from Amazon which arrived in one of their larger offrrings. That was bad enough but the internsl packing was the snake-like paper padding which covered most of my kitchen floor.

I wondered if it was the result of a training session at one of their warehouses.

I kept the box, just in case and eventually used it for a pile of stuff to take to our local charity shop.

Kicking myself for not taking a photo of it!

Steve
 
Received a rather enormous box from Amazon a couple of years ago, and thought for a moment that I must have been sleep-ordering and bought something without remembering, as it was easily big enough to contain some sort of fairly hefty (and expensive) electronic device. Had I ordered a new monitor? A stereo? Maybe a particularly large and fancy toaster?

Nope, it was the micro SD card I ordered. :eek:
 
The packers are the frequent target to blame on threads like this. But in a large warehouse the packaging "decisions" are made by volumetric software systems. The box is the first item picked then individual items are added to it.

With the opening post it's easy to see what's happened. The length of the tube has determined the size of the box, it's the smallest box long enough to fit the tube. The tube is part of the "item" as it comes from the supplier. Amazon do not ship unprotected product packaging regardless of how solid/protected that product packaging is - even if the tube was large enough to accept a standard Amazon delivery label (which it doesn't look like it could).

A client of mine runs a pick-and-pack, the volumetrics are a PITA to keep on top of. Suppliers are always changing their product packaging, and the software's decisions can be thrown by even minor errors in recorded dimensions.
 
Cat LOVES Amazon's paper snakes!
 
Alastair said:
The packers are the frequent target to blame on threads like this. But in a large warehouse the packaging "decisions" are made by volumetric software systems. The box is the first item picked then individual items are added to it.

With the opening post it's easy to see what's happened. The length of the tube has determined the size of the box, it's the smallest box long enough to fit the tube. The tube is part of the "item" as it comes from the supplier. Amazon do not ship unprotected product packaging regardless of how solid/protected that product packaging is - even if the tube was large enough to accept a standard Amazon delivery label (which it doesn't look like it could).

A client of mine runs a pick-and-pack, the volumetrics are a PITA to keep on top of. Suppliers are always changing their product packaging, and the software's decisions can be thrown by even minor errors in recorded dimensions.
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All this is true, and with warehouses that aren't as fully automated as Amazon, it's often impossible to use the smallest box possible.
1. With hundreds of different products of different sizes, it's impossible to stock a great variety of different size boxes
2. Very fragile items need a good solid box and the right kind of packaging materials, if they are to survive the courier services and, even worse, Royal Mail
3. The job needs to be de-skilled as far as possible, for the simple reason that common sense is extremely uncommon, and this involves setting out rules on the minimum amount of empty space in the box and which materials must be used to fill that space. I had a conversation very recently with an apparently intelligent man about this, he has a masters degree but couldn't see why we pack glass modelling lamps in a box, surrounded by bubble wrap - he thought they they would be fine in a plastic envelope...

Boxes and packing is expensive, and logic says that any efficient business will always use the minimum box size and the minimum packaging, and will also take advantage of small size by sending small items via the large letter service where possible, but for the reasons above, this isn't always possible.
 
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