Insane packaging

[MrSlack]

So I ordered a couple of sheets of high density anti static foam from Farnell to store some DIPs in so I don't have to piddle around with tubes all the time. Total item size = 300x300x10mm

The hugest box in the world just turned up - at least a 25 inch cube with just about all the packaging they could muster in it to keep the foam sheets in the bottom in a corner!

And guess what? Some complete wally stuck the item label on the middle of one of the sheets of foam and they really don't peel off whatever you do to them.

Sigh...

[rdl]

I had Mouser do that once.  The only thing I could figure was that they ran out of small boxes and didn't want to delay shipping of the order. But really, foam? They could have just stuck that in a bubble pack envelope.

[PedroDaGr8]

Single HP Mouse on a pallet:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/

or huge box of boxes for 34 license papers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/

[rollatorwieltje]

Reminds me of an issue we had at work where in the ERP software all the weights were suddenly wrong, it didn't interpret the decimal point correctly. So something of 600.00 kg would suddenly be 60000 kg. Pretty much everything is automated, so if that wouldn't have been caught in time shit like this would happen. Imagine the shipping bill for sending a 600000 kg machine halfway across the world. Obviously in that case the shipping company will ask questions, but I can see it happen that something of 1.00 kg will be shipped as 100 kg and nobody notices the absurd shipping costs.

[MrSlack]

I've actually got an ERP horror story similar to that! It was set up to restock self adhesive foam automatically using EDI to a supplier. This was then die cut by the company and supplied to car manufacturers to stick branding and logos on. Someone didn't get their unit prefixes right so when the min stock level on 1.5cm wide rolls of foam was 5000 50m rolls. Entered in the ERP system...

Spec UDMI field: < Width (cm): > .... Value: < 1.5 >

ERP integration used SI with this supplier so the system ordered 5000 rolls of 1.5m foam that were 50m long. The supplier fulfilled the order and instead of the small van turn up, a container turned up.

Took them 5 years to use up all the foam rather than their 6 month lead.

As for Hewlett Packard, they sent us a motorcycle courier on 4 hours (we have a hefty enterprise support agreement with them) with a RAID controller battery in it. Turned up, signed for, opened the box. Empty. Idiots.

[mmagin]

I just had Amazon ship me a small flashlight (Fenix E01 -- 1 AAA battery) in about 1 cubic foot box (about 30x30x30 cm).

[profany]

they did that once to mee, i just wrote an email explaining the situation and they wherer very friendly.

[XOIIO]

I just had Amazon ship me a small flashlight (Fenix E01 -- 1 AAA battery) in about 1 cubic foot box (about 30x30x30 cm).

Lol, I have one of those, that's ludicrous.

[Brumby]

I used to work at an electronics retailer and the stock was shipped to the store from a central warehouse in small, medium and large plain brown boxes of standard proportions, secured with 'tamper evident tape'.  Everything small came in them - from RCA leads to mobile phones.

Occasionally, you would have a large box (about 60cm x 30cn x 30cm) which contained something like a single packet of batteries and then a medium box (half that size) jam packed with mobile phones.

It seems the 'mixing it up' was to make it hard for anyone handling the merchandise between the warehouse and the store to 'lose' the box that happened to contain the valuable stuff.

There might have been a reason - but it did look weird.

[calexanian]

Digikey does this to me all the time. Crazy. I got the other day a single order in two separate over sized boxes. One huge box containing a couple tubes of ships and a second containing 9 additional parts in a Baggie. Both from the same location. Both in boxes an order of magnitude larger than they needed to be when one small box, that I know they have would have done.

[rdl]

Here is another oddity. These were ordered at the same time and were shipped in the same box. I have no idea why they thought the 50 ohm pots needed more protection than the 100 ohm pots. I guess they were picked and bagged by different people.

edit: In case it's not clear from the image, the pots are Bourns trimmers from the same series. There are two 100 ohm in the left bag, three 50 ohm in the right.

[MrSlack]

I just had another stupid delivery. Ordered a Wisher breadboard. Turned up in a box which it didn't quite fit in so they bent all the packaging and just wedged everything with inflatable sacks. The box could hold about 30 of them on end but no we'll wedge it in the bottom. Sigh...

And it turns out the rubber feet were missing.

Fffffff...

I've got a power supply arriving from Rapid tomorrow. Should be interesting.

[AndrewDojo]

I had an order for 10 pieces 4x4mm PIC chips arrive from Element14 (Farnell).

Chips were in an anti-static bag, sandwiched between two pieces of anti-static foam, inside an anti-static box, wrapped in anti-static foam, inside another anti-static bag, inside yet another anti-static bag.

Sunspots can be such a worry...

[jh15]

I've had Amazon ship really fragile items in a large box with a couple air bags thrown in. So just the cardboard between it and oops (UPS) and also tossing around loosely in the box.

I bought a $700.00 camera that way and it failed (12 sec timer stuck on) on the 29th day. They took it back. I figured a pcb was cracked and a trace let go or something.  Was fun trying to anticipate shots on the day of the wedding