Dorene says:

*snickers at Karen*

Lee says:

Which begs the next question: were they packed in bubble wrap, too?
(can anyone tell me why Amazon thinks that books need to be bubble wrapped?)

Robert says:

I purchased a 1gb SD card from Amazon.com. They shipped it in a 11″ x 9″ x 18″ box.

Andrew says:

Oh, yes — each box contained a whole bunch of those big ol’ ‘air pillows.’ Not as much fun as bubble wrap, but they sure kept those towels safe.

Off to buy some UPS stock….

WillyMF1 says:

I bought a five pack of tuna in jars a few weeks back and I was quite amazed when it came in 5 seperate boxes.

amazonian CEO says:

Hmmmmm… someone found our lil’ secret, each box shipped represents one order, sales are also listed by package volume. So what if we ship 5000 1GB SD cards for $39.95 each and it takes an entire truckload, its all about fleecing the stock owners.

I hope the SEC doesn’t see this blog… dear me. :(

Now I just hope we can continue this plan when someone orders multiple food items; just imagine when someone places a bulk food item order. Why our shipments will quadruple… YAY!

Sean says:

I ordered 50 US Flags for our park. Each flag was just 3′x5′ and the packaging for each flag measured only 18″x3″x2″.

After the purchase was finalized, I received an email that informed me that the flags would be sent in a “few” separate packages.

You guessed it. I received 50 separate packages.

The worst part wasn’t receiving 50 packages, nor was it the fact that it took deliviries on 13 different days to receive all 50 boxes.

I received SIX different size boxes (each of them at least 24″x18″x36″) with a strand of (at least 20) inflated packaging ballons (as a filler) in each package.

Opening each package, pulling-out the “ballons”, cutting each ballon to let the air out (so that they would fit into the recycling bin) just to be able to find the flag was a chore. And then disposing of all 50 boxes was a pain on top of that.

Thomas says:

I’m glad you didn’t notice that amazon has two shipping options: Ship as soon as possible (in seperate boxes), or combine orders in fewer boxes (to save money). It’s defaulted to as soon as possible on the order page, and you can edit it while the order is “open”, i.e. up until it’s shipped.

Please don’t blame amazon for giving you the option that you didn’t notice.

GeekyChic.com » says:

[...] Andrew Kantor ordered nine towel sets from Amazon — 9 bath towels and 9 face towels. Inexplicably, Amazon sent this simple order in 18 separate boxes, all of which arrived on the same day. Link http://www.geekychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/towles200609081015.jpg [...]

Andrew says:

Thomas,

Oh, she *did* notice that option — re-read the post. “…and check the box to have Amazon send your order in as few shipments as possible.” It didn’t seem to matter. :)

Anonymous says:

Thomas, he checked “the box to have Amazon send your order in as few shipments as possible.”

Please don’t blame the blogger for making a mistake without reading what he wrote.

Chris says:

Thomas: did you even read the accompanying text? They saw that option and chose to have it combined in as few boxes as possible.

Mike says:

My wife got a tea kettle as a gift from Amazon last year and it arrived gift wrapped as instructed by the sender. It came in a purple fabric gift bag that was large enough for my wife to actually get inside of it!

Adam says:

I wonder if the next step is for them to start sending each individual page of the books you order in separate envelopes. :-/

This reminds me of the Underpacking adventure.

mystery amazon employee says:

I was playing around catching up on things this morning when I saw this. I work for Amazon.com and our Fulfillment Centers are very automated. A lot of the decisions that go into what packaging to use (and how many boxes will ultimately be shipped) are made on a whim. It will often come down to where the items are being shipped from (we have several Fulfillment Centers/warehouses) across the country, how many items they have on hand, and what box is immediately available for use to ship the item (this is why you’ll receive a memory card in a box big enough to contain a dictionary — an UNABRIDGED dictionary).

I’ve often found that orders of one single item in multiples greater than one will generate some of the stranger packaging. It’s normally because the internal notifications to ship (which are generated in a fashion that will enable us to package available items as quickly as possible) will be created at different times which lead the Fulfillment Center employees to package things one or two items at a time.

Hope this helps to show that we’re not entirely crazy.

Andrew says:

Thank you, mystery amazon employee! I love getting the behind-the-scenes explanation. I didn’t think you folks were crazy — I figured it had to be an automation thing (or high-school students paid by the box :).

Carol says:

While I can’t speak for Amazon, as a mail-order bookseller I can tell you that if books are not sufficiently padded they can get dented on the sides or corners. If they are returned like that, they are unsalable.

Those of us who have small mail-order businesses go through a lot of packaging. We’ve got two choices. We can buy it, or scrounge it. If we have to buy it, that cost either comes out of our often slim profit margin, or we pass it on to our customers. Our customers often don’t blink an eye at paying through the nose for shipping and handling fees from big companies who can benefit by doing everything in bulk, but sometimes get whiny about paying decent S & H to an micro-business which has to stop all other income-generating work to pack the orders.

Find out who in your neighborhood does mail order. We can use your boxes, your bubble-wrap, and your “peanuts” (my babies didn’t get to eat rice cakes for years, because I was worried they wouldn’t be able to tell them from the styrofoam peanuts that end up getting everywhere in our house)). The air pillows are a pain in the ass for us too, though.

Johnie says:

I recently ordered 2 pillows from Amazon. They shipped both in its own packaging that measured 24″ x 14″ x 10″. Way bigger than it really needed to be. Since they are pillows, I don’t think it’s necessary to stuff it with those package air bag neither.

When I received this, I was quite concerned since not only was I a customer, but also a stock holder.

Amazon really needs to figure out how to ship things more efficiently cost-effectively.

CharlesP says:

As a former amazonian (at one of the centers that got shut down when “the bubble popped”) I know there were usually some safe guards in place to prevent this from happening. I think that since that time though, the automation process has become even more automated and hence you have these situations. When I worked there the logic was to order as few things in a go as possible because the larger the order the more likely it was for the system to wait and wait for that one last item. I’d guess that this sort of scenario was their way around that, and generally it works, but at times this sort of thing happens.

The rules I try and follow are:
A) order as few things as possible together (so if I’m ordering $80 worth of stuff I’ll break it into 3 orders over $25 so I get free shipping on each one and the system is more likely to ship them)
B) stick with books/cds/dvds together as they tend to come from place X vs the “non-media” items which come from other FCs (which were called DCs when I was there… *sigh* I feel old).
C) divide orders up with “in stock ships in 24 hours” together and anything else in its own order.

I will say that some of the items I’ve ordered lately haven’t been packed as reliably in the more/most efficient way like they used to. If you ordered a single book/movie/dvd 5 years ago it always went down a slam line and got packed in a vdf (veriable depth folder), which was not a lot of extra packing, but the books tend to come in less damaged. Now I’ve had single books come in a box with pillows and have a corner or two dinged. I can’t speak for current amazon, but there used to be very stringent QC on books that got shipped because the theory was that we want you to get a book in the mail in better shape than you’d get it if you went to a brick and morter bookseller where it’s been on a shelf picked up and flipped through 20 times before you got to it.

sunny says:

I can’t speak to Amazon, but as a former industrial parts distributor with 7 distribution sites, our wharehousing system would always default the box size to at least twice the part size. This was to ensure proper packaging and reduce damage in shipping. If 18 items were sent to one custumer on the same day, they were flagged and shrink wrapped together for shipping. Granted some of these went on pallets so UPS/Fed Ex was not an option.

When large orders were created sometimes parts were shipped from points all over the country. Each wharehouse reflects the region in which it operates in terms of stock. But some orders do not live to history.

We had some of the same “tree killer” comments from customers. All of our boxes were made from and stamped as made from recycled materials. While that’s nice and all, the amount of boxes and packing used was never a cost issue as each package would average fractions of a penny in packaging. Except of course in the large items that were shiiped truck shipment anyway.

just my take…

MICHAEL VERDI : Get With The Program says:

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Lemon says:

Here’s an even more ironic one for you: We ordered a dozen recycling bins from Staples…which came in, you guessed it, a dozen boxes. Once we had unpacked them all, broken down the cardboard, and cut up the plastic packing pillows, we realized that when stacked, all of the bins would have fit into a single box.

But at least we had plenty of space to store recycling…

C.B. says:

I recently ordered some books from Amazon and selected both the free shipping and the “ship in as few boxes as possible” options, only to be told by the site that my order of four items would be shipped in three packages. Apparently they were all shipping from different locations, but when my stuff finally showed up, it all came in one package after all. So at least some times they mess up right.

I still got more bagged air than I probably needed, though.

Jessica says:

To everyone who’s complained about the bubble wrap/plastic air bags.

If a package is damaged via a UPS shipment, UPS customer service will ask you how the item was packaged. UPS will NOT guarantee a package, or issue any refund on a package that has less than 1 inch of bubble wrap/packing peanuts, or air pillows around it.

Then the quantity. Yes it is automated and most of the time comes from different warehouses. Someone stands on an assembly line of sorts with thousands of these boxes and a packing slip. Do they look to see who the item is going to or go sort through these boxes to check and see if they could be combined, no. They simply pick up the slip and check to see what goes into the box and drop it/seal it. Time is a factor to take into consideration as well. Yes its unfortunate but in large retailers/wholesalers its going to happen.. Recycle the boxes, reuse the air pockets and you won’t be killing trees.

Atomische says:

Oh NO! I recntly placed an order for this and now I’m VERY WORRIED about how it will ship:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00016LLUQ/ref=wl_it_dp/104-6484154-3740752?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2AC3KM3ZIUYMB&colid=Y9GUSG5SWKF2

Rich Testani says:

Don’t they do this so they can charge you per package for shipping?

Gianluca Pezzi Web Log » 18 scatole da Amazon? says:

[...] Questo tizio ha ordinato una serie di 9 asciugamani, o meglio ha ordinato 9 asciugamani da bagno e 9 da viso. [...]

Grant says:

Just remember that there are several things you can do with these extra boxes besides throwing them in the garbage:
-Ask friends and coworkers if anybody needs boxes for moving, etc.
-Keep the boxes for future shipping needs (selling stuff on ebay, Christmas gifts, moving, etc.)
-Recycle them

TLM says:

Oh, that amazon had been so careful with my orders. I usually get the books stacked on a sheet of cardboard, with some kind of plastic wrapped round the lot (it reminds me of the outter wrap used on palets of goods). This is then stuck in a much larger box, occasionally with a couple of gratuitous air pillows, which do nothing to protect the books, the smaller paperbacks are left to bounce around inside the inner packaging, so I end up with them scrunched on top of each other, corners and pages bent, dustcovers torn on the hardbacks. If I’ve made the horrible mistake of ordering DVDs or CDs with the books, they generally get shoved in as well, and bounced around with the books, resulting in cracked or broken jewel cases on the CDs and the occasional hole or rip in the plastic outer sleeve of the DVDs. One dvd came completely crushed as they’d sandwiched it between a sheet of cardboard and a rather heavy tome using the aforementioned plastic, and then dumped that in a much larger box to rattle around in (sans useless air pillows that time).

Wrapping books in bubble wrap actually isn’t such a bad idea if it’s done properly, as it helps to protect the corners. Those air pillows are useless most of the time as they tend to just shift around.

UPS is the worst for damaging packages. I honestly wonder sometimes if they have contests to see who can dropkick them the furthest from the back of the truck. A friend shipped his computer in a thick cardboard box, surrounded by about 5inches of blown-in styrofoam. They still managed to destroy the box, shred the styrofoam, and crack the corner of the computer’s case. I wonder what it would have looked like if he hadn’t been so paranoid ?

George says:

It’s common for purveyors of fabulous deals to really make their money on shipping and “handling”. Have you gotten your shipping bill yet?

bah says:

Bah,

We’ve got farms for trees, just like we’v got farms for corn. Just as we are not running out of corn, we are not running out of trees. More trees are planted each year than what is cut down.

so STFU.

:)

Callum Alden says:

bah; how many years do you think it will take for these trees,you talk about, to grow into large enough plants to be ready for cutting / pulping… turning into paper – minimum 15, more likely 20+

you silly noise.

bah says:

re: trees – -what does it matter when we are consuming less than we are producing? TREES ARE A RENEWABLE RESOURCE. oil is not really, as it takes millons of years, not 15.

Yes, old growth forests should be left alone. They produce more o2 than tree farms, and a homes for little known and unknown critters. But the fact of the matter is: It’s worse for the environment to recycle paper than it is to grow more tree on tree farms, and just trash the paper. Have you looked at the costs and biproducts of recycling paper? It’s nasty stuff.

Consuming less is always a good thing. But ‘tree huggers’ generally don’t know how things really work. What upsets me is the ‘think of the poor trees’ mindset.

karen says:

About the shipping: It was free. So they didn’t make anything from us on that.

Very nice towels, now that I have them out of the boxes =0)

btb says:

Recently I ordered 10 adsl filters through amazon.co.uk to help a friend and they billed me 10 times full postage, costing me 45 quid extra for a product that costs 10p. Guess what? they did send the lot in one pack, so they swindled me 9 times postage fee.

They of course will never see anything ordered by me and all I urge not to buy at them

simplehiker » Amazon… WTF? says:

[...] Kantor.com (via Boing Boing) [...]

Nine towels gets you 18 boxes from AmazonBoing Boing says:

[...] Andrew’s wife commented, “Good thing I didn’t get the washcloths, too.” Link [...]

Dan says:

I feel for anyone ordering the Complete Penguin Classics
http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Classics-Library-Complete-Collection/dp/0147503078/sr=8-1/qid=1157776728/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2051626-9039235?ie=UTF8&s=books

Book Nook of Orange County says:

Lee says: “…(can anyone tell me why Amazon thinks that books need to be bubble wrapped?)”

Because books are actually quite fragile and the US Postal System can trash them in short order. The most common problems are corner bumps, from when the postal sorters use the packages as frisbees and they crash into walls, concrete floors, etc. Also, spines can get split, covers can get gouged, and boards can get torn off. Properly applied and taped bubblewrap also helps protect the book from that other great enemy: moisture. We once had a Priority Mail book returned because the USPS managed to somehow rip off the (clear tape coverred) delivery label. The shipping mailer had tire tracks all over it. Finally, just dumping a book loose into a shipping bag creates two big problems: 1) the small back-and-forth movements of the book will wear all of the corners; 2) the friction of the book against the mailer wall (whether paper or bubbles) will create wear on the covers. You end up with a book that looks like it has been gently sandblasted.

We are a 3rd party seller on Amazon and we first wrap our books in blank newsprint (regular newsprint ink will rub off), then use several layers of tightly wrapped and taped “bubble-in” bubblewrap (”bubble-in” protects better); and then use a bubble mailer (or a box if the book is old, very heavy, or in delicate condition).

Over the years we’ve gotten a few complaints about “too much wrapping” but many many glowing feedbacks about the care taken in seeing that our customers got their product undamaged.

Personally, I don’t think very much of Amazon’s level of protection.

Glenna says:

I appreciate you bringing up this problem. I see it everywhere. I practically have to armwrestle the baggers at the market so that I can use my own bags and bag things myself. (If they bag them, they put one or two items in per bag and they say I have not got enough bags of my own.) If one goes thru a drive thru (shudder) you are given twenty napkins to go with one sandwich, and god forbid you ask for mayo, because you get a handful of those.

It seems important to begin to use a lot less resources, and use those wisely. I guess we have to keep trying to be personally responsible, as you were in checking that box, and also letting a company know we are not happy with so much packaging.

When we can afford to do so, it is great to get products from companies that do everything in an ecco friendly way and also make sure that the businesses, as well as the products, are cruelty free.

Happy Trails!

The rambling soapbox of a discontented suburbia says:

[...] http://www.kantor.com/2006/09/07/amazoncom-treekillers/ [...]

Rob Kohr says:

Here is a simple fact of life/commerce:

Time is more valuable then stuff.

A single box = 5 cents

If an employee gets paid $6 an hour, he gets 10 cents per minute. If it takes him a minute to save material for one box, you lose 5 cents.

That is not counting the management, lights, warehouse lease, and all the other costs that go into that one minute.

zanngo says:

The thing that bugs me about all that is the EXTREME waste of resources. So, paper is renewable and recyclable, and all that. It still took all that plastic for the air pillows. And half of a UPS truck, which means the extra gasoline required for the truck to go back and pick up whatever else couldn’t fit in it the first time. And all the electricity and chemicals that went into producing the boxes in the first place. Etc.
I see lots of people writing their explanations of why Amazon does it that way. So what? It’s absurd and disgusting business practice, wasteful and careless, and exactly why I won’t shop with them…

Electric Spork » Does Amazon.com Care About Our Environment? says:

[...] He then referenced the infamous Kantor.com blog post wherein Amazon sent 18 towels in 18 different boxes. [...]

A Green Idea » Blog Archive » Does Amazon.com Care About Our Environment? says:

[...] If this wasn’t enough to convince you, have a look at this blog. This poor guy ordered a set of towels… 9 bath towels, and 9 face towels: [...]