HP breaks Japanese excessive packaging record Those of you who don't like trees very much will appreciate HP's continuing efforts to deforest the planet by using the maximum cardboard possible when dispatching items to expectant customers. Here's a big box the company recently delivered to loyal Reg reader Simon Lucas, who's based in Tokyo: Photo of a large box from HP …
We needed a firmware update for a switch from HP. It came in a manila CD envelope from the tech folk, which was put inside a cardboard box when it was shipped from HP to our equipment supplier, which was THEN put inside a box roughly the size of boxfile for shipping to our location.
Amazing, really.
Bah, this is peanuts as compared to what HP can *really* do.
Whenever we install a fully loaded blade chassis, I'm not kidding, there's a full *palet* of small boxes, of which we keep only one sheet per 4 boxes: the licences.
The rest is countless times the same HPUX install DVD + docs etc ...
All of that because of the moronic way their logistics is organised.
Mine is the chainsaw icon :-)
I once bought a dimm from a private seller on amazon. It came wrapped merely in a single tiny piece of bubblewrap secured with sticky tape then popped in a normal envelope. No anti-static, nothing to stiffen it against bending by Pat. The seller told me he'd always done that.
If that wasn't enough to secure an acid review of the seller, it clearly wasn't ECC as I'd asked.
Straight back it went.
Just so I understand - I take the smallest thing I can think of, put it in the largest box I happen to have handy, take a photo of said combination and mail it off to the Reg for instant fame. No proof necessary.
Or was this claim somehow verified in a way which isn't explained in the article?
Not at all surprised. As an installation engineer, half the time installing a HP server was spent hacking through all the packaging. Installing a dozen disks, a half dozen memory modules, a few NICs, plus the server itself usually involved the deforestation of an area the size of Wales.
From Boots (the chemist people).
A relative had recently moved to Australia and for Christmas had decided to get me vouchers for boots, it came in the form of a credit card.
It came in huge box, probably similar volume to that box but more square, full of the those poly bags.
MAD!
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A couple of years ago we arranged to borrow a unix server from HP in order to test our product on HPUX. A lorry arrived with a wooden crate about 7ft high by 4ft square. It was evidently a big machine. We didn't have a forklift truck to unload it, so the driver had to take it away and came back the next day with a tail lift lorry. The crate was too big to fit in the lift, so 12 of us had to heave it up 2 flights of stairs. It took all morning.
When we unpacked the crate, it contained a 42U rack, that we didn't want or need. Installed in the rack was a single 1U server! We spent the whole afternoon ROTFL.
When working for a company in the midlands a couple of years ago, we purchased a licence to analyze the performance of one of our hight end storage arrays. A box was delivered to goods-in, on a pallet, the box was approx 1m wide, 2m long and about waist high, it was full of those annoying sticky polystyrene chips, buried in which was a thinner box that contained an A4 sheet (the licence) of paper and a cd. No photos though.
Mines the one with those chips stuck to it
Doesn't look like much to me - only one box inside, unlike the usual bulk-pack style we are used to.
In any case, I am more concerned by the use of oil-based plastics to fill up the empty space, instead of paper or corrugated cardboard. Much better for the environment to be using and storing wood-based products than to leave them outside to rot.
I nominate CPC and eBuyer for the excessive packaging awards!
I have photo's that I need to dig out (whitnessed by several office staff)
I had a 1gb SD card arrive from ebuyer in a box aprox 60cmx30cmx20xm
CPC win the award though for sending me a pack of 5 toggle switches in a box around 80cmx30cmx20xm
I ordered a Belkin wireless USB dongle, and received it in a box 4ft long by 2ft wide by 2ft high. A consequence, I assume of stuff being shipped now being priced according to weight rather than bulk (due to changes in EU postal legislation which also led to the closure of thousands of post offices in the UK).
WTF?
By Liam Posted Friday 18th July 2008 10:52 GMT
thats worse than some packages we used to get. best ive seen is a box about 1m cubed... full of bubble wrap etc... inside was one RAM module, in its protective plastic casing anyway...
i thought companies were supposed to be getting penalised for this? seems bad that local authorities and customers have so much rubbish/recycling to get rid of!
I recently recieved a new Sim card,
Cue C3 Padded envelope!
Containg C5 card envelope
Containg 1 folded page of A4 and a Sim Card.
I guess the phOne cOmpany in question are only geared for sending out new phones and dont sell many sim only packages... oddly the tout sim only as a greener way to go by recyling your old phone..
I ordered one bag of 100 x UTP cat5 connectors a few years ago. The next day, an a3 jiffy bag
arrive containing.... a single connector. To make matters worse, the muppet who picked and packed it would have had to open a bag of 100 to take the single connector out! I mean, one connector? Go figure.
I wounder if this came about when the bloke rung HP for replacement memory - the (not so) tech' bloke seemd lost with the term DIMM & was told 'the small memory card type thing, well I need something bigger" - oh thought the tech' bigger now I've got it.
Although I'm sure the company would use the line 'its to prevent damage'
You lot are numptys, put yourself in HP's shoes for a minute.
*Dispatch 1 thats ONE stick of memory to a guy in Tokyo*
Ok so here's your choices:
Send it as it is in it's little box, that's not even big enough for a delivery barcode let alone an address too, and due to it's size will most likely get lost by in some warehouse for eternity.
Or...
Put said small box into any bigger box that has been lying around for a while and needs using up
I know which I would choose if i were the dispatcher or customer!
I never discount these stories out of hand for a simple reason. I've spent enough time dealing with HP to have been on the receiving end of their legendary packing techniques. I've seen the kind of thing shown in the photo and worse. There are other vendors that come close, but HP always takes the prize for obscene over packaging.
Mine's the one wrapped in bubble wrap, suspended by cling wrap, inside a box, inside another box surrounded by styrofoam peanuts, strapped to a palet.
the barely over one inch cubed device send in a box with return packaging from Apple (to return the "defective" plug) was about the size of the box in your images. That pen might just occupy a little more actual volume.
Very close call there. Except Apple is recalling *hundreds* of these.
After a bit of snickering I can only say that this reminds me of HP's habit of driver bloat. Seriously, guys, I only want to print stuff. That requires about two files, if you try real hard amounting to 2MB. Why the bloody hell do you folks need to include 400MB of random crap that I'll never use?
That isn't just any old cardboard box. That is a recycled cardbox box. If HP manages to shift enough volume of recycled cardbox it can claim it is offsetting its carbon footprint. Judging by the picture HP is on its way to becoming a carbon neatrul company. And that has to be a good thing, right?
I often receive packages from Cisco, such as SFPs in a box so big that I actually fitted all twelve SFPs into the box one of them came in. But their best is to send cardboard boxes full of packing for an A4 sheet with a toughened outer, with 1 sheet inside with my license key......crazy
I took delivery some years ago of some IBM kit, in a big box on a pallet.
We opened all of the smaller boxes that we recognized, and found that we were left with one moderately sizable one (about CRT monitor size). We opened it, wondering what extra goodies we had been sent, only to find it was completely empty. Apparently, it was to fill the box to keep the other stuff safe. This was apparently normal practice, and IBM had a range of empty boxes, all with IBM part numbers, to serve this function.
I once ordered a single drawing pin from Amazon.co.uk. Imagine my horror when, two days later, I found the USS Nimitz on my doorstep; deep inside one of the hangars was an enormous container which held a series of ever-smaller cardboard boxes. Inside the final box was a man dressed in a gorilla suit, and when I pulled off his mask... it was me.
follow a similar method.
They use standard size boxes, so you can order a bag of plumbing bits (15mm end-feed elbows, for example) and it will turn up in a box 2ft * 1ft * 18 inches. thoughtfully they use some sort of shrink wrap to stop it rattling around.
You also get a free screwfix catalogue every time you order -regardless of how often you order.
Then to top it all off they send you one in the post each month as well.
Paris because she will need a screw fixed
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