OTT Packaging

[bricol]

Veritas Tools in Canada sent me 2 small special bolts for a countersink, roughly 5mm dia x 40mm long in a box measuring 8"x 6" x 4". Both would have fitted in a small jiffy bag! Must have cost them a fortune to send as it was delivered in 5 days all the way from Canada! Cost me nothing as it was a warranty replacement item.

Jiffy bags get lost - literally slip between the gaps. So use a proper box that doesn't - cheaper in the end. Something our dispatch learned.

Mind you, I recently received two shock absorbers from the USA - one in a box a layer of bubble wrap bigger than the shock - the other in a box you could have got a dozen of them in - with about as much bubble wrap as the first, so it rattled around a bit - but both arrived safely.

 

[merryman]

Jiffy bags get lost - literally slip between the gaps. So use a proper box that doesn't - cheaper in the end. Something our dispatch learned.

I think you must be using the wrong courier. I send hundreds of packages out a year, mostly in Jiffy bags or those little grey plastic ones, and my Royal Mail losses are about 1 in 500. Come to think about it the last lost one was a "small package" box and I'm not sure the buyer wasn't trying to pull a fast one, as the "delivered" GPS coordinates were in his cul-de-sac which held about 4 houses.

Amazon seem to be the biggest culprits for oversize boxes, got one last week, huge box with two 60" long throttle cables inside, would have easily fitted inside a medium size corn flake packet, which is what one of 'em went out again in.

 

[4String.]

Slightly off topic (who'd have thought it ) years ago we used to ship machine tools all over the world in 20' and 40' containers.

Some of the shipping companies charged by volume and we were charged more if the box wasn't full to the brim so we used to weld lengths of scaffold tube or steam pipe into the appropriate length and drill and tap holes in them at various points and claim they were fixtures for the m/c's .

Still don't understand how that system of charging worked considering the box took up the same space no matter what was in it .

 

[bricol]

I think you must be using the wrong courier. I send hundreds of packages out a year, mostly in Jiffy bags or those little grey plastic ones, and my Royal Mail losses are about 1 in 500. Come to think about it the last lost one was a "small package" box and I'm not sure the buyer wasn't trying to pull a fast one, as the "delivered" GPS coordinates were in his cul-de-sac which held about 4 houses.

Amazon seem to be the biggest culprits for oversize boxes, got one last week, huge box with two 60" long throttle cables inside, would have easily fitted inside a medium size corn flake packet, which is what one of 'em went out again in.

Ship international as a business shipping hundreds, if not thousands of parts, a day, and it adds up . . . and the time lost chasing, re-doing the entire process from raising demand, getting it picked, given to dispatch, packed, sent . . . never mind hacking off the customer/our service guys . . . its not quite as clear cut . . . once you realise more small packages go missing than anything else, you stop sending small packages. Co-incidentally, I was told on thursday the value of the components lost last year - would buy a nice Mclaren 620 . .. .

The guysngals in an Amazon warehouse are up against it - grab the box near you and get it gone . . . or go find another . . . again, hundreds of parcels a day each - so if you want to pay 15p with free delivery, then while it irritates and annoys us as consumers . . . one of my summer jobs as a student a good few years ago was picking and packing - to save your legs, shoe leather, aching feet, agitated supervisor . . . you'd just get it picked, packed and gone.

 

[skotl]

A new record? (bigger than A4, for reference)

 

[Erie Fred]

A new record? (bigger than A4, for reference)

View attachment 413003

So....go do your part and re-use it a few times, short term parts storage on a job your working on, masking for spray painting etc.

And then put it in the proper recycling bin.

 

[JEZGUZ]

When I was working in a warehouse,(thankfully no more) I was picking orders and an order came through for 1 x 0.3 mm drillbit. If you look at these the wrong way they'll break, I thought "what kind of skinflint firm orders 1 drillbit" Opened a box of 10 and put it in 2 plastic bags and then into a jiffy bag, 'fragile' label as well, some of the people working there could lose and /or damage anything.