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121 Comments
- sjbdallas, on 01/12/2009, -2/+76There's a "Jewish Channel"?
- bombula, on 01/13/2009, -2/+57So you'd rather they ship a hard drive in a box just big enough for the drive to fit in? Great idea. Just wait and see how UPS or Fed Ex handles packages that are the same size and weight as ones with books from amazon.com...
- ZaZ2137, on 01/13/2009, -0/+45Obviously they're wanting you to build a box fort.
- inactive, on 01/13/2009, -3/+31Who gives a *****?
A company takes extra care to ensure your hard drive (something that can be damaged by shocks) isnt damaged in shipping, and this ***** site cries about it. They even used paper instead of foam to pack it, quit ***** bitching.
***** ecotards, its cardboard for ***** sake. It dissolves to nothing very quickly, and we arnt exactly running out of trees. - hotmeteor, on 01/13/2009, -1/+2824 hours 7 days a week of pure shalom.
- MattL920, on 01/13/2009, -3/+24They all are...
ZING! - inactive, on 01/13/2009, -10/+26So the ***** what? You don't like Buy.com's shipping policy, then don't ***** shop there.
***** Consumerist trash. - oboshoe, on 01/13/2009, -1/+15This isn't new.
I remember very well when I bought my first pc in 1989 at Compuadd. They told me it would take 3 or 4 days before I could pick it up. When I inquried why, they told me that they had to assemble it.
I had just spent a month's salary and I wanted it NOW. "Oh heck, don't worry about that, just give it to me in parts". And they did. everything was in parts motherboard, all the accessory cards and memory chips.
Everything was in oversized boxes and it filled the back and cab of my pickup truck.
At the time I was living at home. My mom absolutely freaked when I started hauling in all these boxes. Told her I bought a computer and she thought I had bought some sort of mainframe or something that shes seen on television.
$2100. Compuadd 80286 with 640k of memory and 20meg harddrive. Sniff. wish I still had it. - Sakumi, on 01/13/2009, -2/+16I would have preferred this. UPS and FedEx treat your package like crap, and I would like my hard disks working upon arrival.
- soggydave2113, on 01/13/2009, -7/+18This made the front page?
Who cares? - praisethelard, on 01/13/2009, -1/+11It's somewhere between CBN and BET.
- platipuz, on 01/13/2009, -0/+10He could probably afford a $2k computer *because* he lived at home. When you are living at home, you don't have to worry about rent, food or anything else that costs money. This gives you a lot of free spending money if you're working.
- desken, on 01/12/2009, -9/+18It's not the first time and certainly won't be the last the IT industry has been wasteful.
- springboks, on 01/13/2009, -0/+9I'm in need of some moving boxes. I think I'll order some paper clips from buy.com
- alankem, on 01/13/2009, -5/+14My dick in a box needs this.
- newtondave, on 01/13/2009, -0/+9Or, in this case, the online retail industry. Last I heard IT companies don't sell shoes.
- newtondave, on 01/13/2009, -1/+10YEAH! ***** *****-*****!!!!
- shnizep, on 01/13/2009, -3/+12Stupid & buried... Those hard drives might be fragile in shipping requiring extra packing material, requiring a larger box. These shipping companies treat boxes like sh*t so I wouldn't doubt the need for extra packing material.
- inactive, on 01/13/2009, -0/+8Um, you can afford a $2k PC when you're 16 if you have a job...
- K4Lic0, on 01/13/2009, -0/+8Except AlienMushroom was dumb enough to not read the article. It was just one order.
- hackiavelli, on 01/13/2009, -0/+8Yep. You may fit four hard drives in one box but you sure as hell wouldn't want to ship them that way. There wouldn't be nearly enough cushioning to survive the abuse (UPS won't even cover a damaged package if you have less than 2" of packing material on each side).
I'm guessing that hard drive might be more susceptible to shock than others so they're purposely over-packing. It's far cheaper to do that than replace a hard drive (keep in mind they're also sending out semi loads of orders at a time so their rates with UPS will be much better than an individual gets). - oboshoe, on 01/13/2009, -0/+7Actually extra airspace in the box, doesn't create a one for one translation in how much extra cardboard was used.
400% extra airspace is probably only about 40% extra cardboard. - ExSlashdotter, on 01/13/2009, -0/+6So what. I see this every day (i'm an IT guy too actually).
Try ordering a soft laptop bag from staples. It comes in a huge box with inflated plastic bubbles inside. Now order 25 laptop bags. You get 25 boxes, each full of air. You know, cause you'd hate those laptop bags to hit each other or scratch or something. We're talking boxes big enough to easily fit 5 or 6 bags without even squeezing them.
Or try ordering a cell phone from verizon (or especially a replacement phone aka FRU). Same deal.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. - Barackalypse, on 01/13/2009, -2/+8Why does the Consumerist waste space on lame posts like this when they could be using it instead to help educate consumers on how to avoid being ripped off or outting the companies with bad customer service? In addition to the "boxes too big for product" post, other Consumerist stories that are utterly worthless include:
1) The open box item being more expensive than a new item (this happens because when an item goes on sale stores don't reprice all the open box versions)
2) Negative roll-back prices (when prices are higher now than before)
3) Grocery product shrink ray, yes, you're so very clever for coming up with the name, but I don't need you to chronicle every item that has a smaller package than it used to any more than I need a list of every product that is the same size and more expensive.
4) The buy 2 price actually representing a worse per item price than buying just one. - purelithium, on 01/13/2009, -1/+7He said there was only one packing slip, in only one of the boxes. Separate orders would have generated separate packing slips.
- PGPirate, on 01/13/2009, -2/+8Its called TV
- inactive, on 01/13/2009, -0/+6Maybe they ran statistical models that determined smaller boxes are more likely to be thrown by UPS/FEDEX and cause damaged hard-drives more frequently, and thus they chose larger boxes to ship the expensive hard-drives in to save money? We all know UPS and FEDEX aren't the best at taking care of your stuff.
- merreborn, on 01/13/2009, -1/+7The article says they were sent with a single packing slip, in one of the 4 boxes.
- colasrtney, on 01/13/2009, -0/+6FTA - "Silly, silly, planet-killing shippers" --- Oh yeah, because out of everything we do to the planet, THIS is what really hurts.
- AlienMushroom, on 01/13/2009, -1/+6Why not?
- inactive, on 01/13/2009, -1/+6I don't think so, they only had one receipt (not individual receipts as separate orders would entail).
- hackiavelli, on 01/13/2009, -0/+5It might not meet minimum packing requirements. UPS wants 2" of cushioning on each side. Fragile products will require even more. Minimally it should be packed in such a way to withstand a fall from waist height (preferably from chest height).
Despite what Consumerist writes they don't know how much it cost Buy.com to ship the order. It is absolutely NOT the same as shipping four separate packages to the same address. Four packages as part of one shipment is considerably cheaper.
Also, it's not the size of the package UPS cares about (in this case at least; those boxes aren't big enough to qualify as over-sized) but the weight. The packing material is usually marginal compared to the weight of the product overall.
Bulk shippers get good rates too. It comes from shipping so much (semi loads at a time) and doing address pre-verification. I'd doubt they even spent $10 more shipping them in separate boxes rather than one. And that's certainly cheaper than having to replace one or more hard drives.
All that or the packer just didn't know what they were doing. - meed, on 01/13/2009, -1/+6How about acknowledging that the drives got there unharmed? I don't know about you but when I recieved the last drive that wasordered my ordered online, the shipping container was trashed and barely staying closed. I was very surprised when the drive ran and then continued to do so till this day.
- jessemoya, on 01/13/2009, -0/+4I also have a feeling, that for some reason, you have poor reading comprehension skills.
- Awspire, on 01/13/2009, -1/+5Who gives a *****. If I got that, it would be great. Four big boxes and packing material for free or reduced cost particularly if the shipping was free. Yep, when I get boxes from received items, I simply take the boxes apart and store them with the excess packing material for future use. Good boxes are expensive, and if some company foolishly ships their items, then its my gain and their loss.
- BananaGrabber, on 01/13/2009, -1/+4The hard drives were well protected by the packing paper. I don't see the big deal. Buy.com probably has a mutually beneficial relationship with UPS so they get charged way less for shipping so using those numbers is kind stupid. He seriously thinks they paid 37 dollars to ship them? Also, assuming all the savings would be passed on to him is damn naive. He'd be charged the same and buy.com would be the one that saved money.
- CNAIF, on 01/13/2009, -0/+3heh heh
My first HD was 20 meg as well (1985 I think) I remember thinking "Damn I'll never fill that" - inactive, on 01/13/2009, -1/+4Wrong, there was a single receipt indicating one order. If they had been ordered separately, they would have had 4 receipts (one for each individually placed order).
- kcasper, on 01/13/2009, -0/+3Not that surprising. This is what happens when you depend on a computer program to dictate packing for everything. For some items it won't make sense. You should see some of the idiocy at the distribution center I work at. I've seen the system recommend the largest box for an item that fits in the smallest box.
Whatever happened to the boxes filled with foam designed to ship just one drive? The ones that allow two inches of foam around the drive I mean. - oboshoe, on 01/13/2009, -0/+3exactly the others nailed it.
At that time, I could spend a whole pay check on fun stuff. - FuzzplugJones, on 01/13/2009, -1/+4Actually, the boxes DID have 6 hard drives each in them, but since the guy who ordered them was Jewish, he only paid for one per.
- Ferros2600, on 01/13/2009, -1/+4buy.com rules. got a JVC 56" 720p for $1281, no tax, free shipping. freaking awsome!
- A11YND, on 01/13/2009, -0/+3From Steve of the "Jewish Channel" letter:
"At UPS.com, if you calculate the shipping cost of the same weight, but the hard drive's dimensions instead of the box's dimensions. You get $8.06 for the smaller, $12.42 for the larger. So, at regular rates, that means $17 was lost by buy.com that didn't need to be
If they'd shipped all four in one box, it would've cost $12.42. So that'd a savings of $37.20 versus what they paid. And those savings could've been passed on to me. I could've paid $9 less per hard drive."
Way to prove you're not a stereotype there Steve! - newtondave, on 01/13/2009, -0/+3How do you see four boxes as two?
- subliminali, on 01/13/2009, -0/+3you need to get three friends
- inactive, on 01/13/2009, -10/+13Which is why the Consumerist exists--to let people who care about horrible business policies. If you don't care, then don't ***** click on the link.
***** whining trash. - maskedm564, on 01/13/2009, -1/+3Well his drives came working didn't they?
I don't see a problem here. - k3nnyd, on 01/13/2009, -0/+2I haven't had this problem with OEM drives from Newegg. As long as they tightly pack a box with peanuts and keep the drive nicely surrounded by them, the drive should be fine outside of a severe crushing incident. Also you could say that hard drives themselves are just prone to manufacturing defects. Newegg is one of few sites that allow commenting on computer products and I'm willing to bet that other sites sell just as many defective hard drives but it just doesn't seem like it cause there's no publicly available feedback system.
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