Slashdot Mirror
HP Shatters Excessive Packaging World Record
An anonymous reader writes "HP customers will be familiar with their bizarre packaging practices (5 pounds of packaging for 8 license keys!); lets just say this story is not an isolated incident ... " I've seen some excessive packaging, but perhaps nothing to top this.
I've seen something crazy, but not that crazy. That's just ... crazy.
Remind me to never request a printed manual from HP. Every page would be in a different box.
Now that is _truly_ dirty paging. Yikes!
Ever tried ordering a 100-page printer manual from HP? I ran out of space in my lawn after the third trailer truck arrived...
Futurama Madhouse
HP : Hewlett Packard, Heaped Packaging, Heavy Paper, Hopeless Paperweight, Highly Priced...
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Tell them you already got your license entitlements via BitTorrent.
Game... blouses.
Weird, I use email to ship keys. Its faster and *much* cheaper.
Did they give him a read T-shirt as a freebie?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
My...that's a big package.
By venturing more than 3 feet into the depths of this 'box' you agree that any encounters that may result between the entrant and any:
I - trolls
II - goblins or
III - beings of origins
a - Extraterrestrial
b - Indeterminate
c - Unknown
are the sole responsibility of the recipient.
Furthermore, you agree that any objects discovered therein, including but not limited to:
I - treasure,
II - artifact,
III - relics of historical significance, or
IV - the shipped product
are to remain the property of HP, inc. in perpetuity and are to be returned with 28 calendar days, with attachment of a check for the full value of any life insurance policies, savings, properties or outstanding paychecks of any of the intended package recipients who may have perished within.
Oh, just smile for once, damnit. Is that so much to ask?
lol... paying for a C++ compiler. You're funny, I like you.
When I bought stuff from DEC in the 80s, each software licence weighed a couple of kilos. They were a single sheet of paper, inside a cover that looked like it should be wrapped around the lifetime's work of some middle ages monk. If I bought, say, VMS, Fortran and C for a machine, I got three of these monsters. I figured they were trying to compensate in some twisted way for charging $20k a copy for a compiler.
Well... Thank you. In 1998 I was tasked with finding a way to use an EXT-210 library. For 99.999% of us: That's an 8MM DAT library with 10 slots and two libraries. At the time, in light of the newly-announced unimaginagibly-massive 36GB drives, it still made a lot of sense... hell, if you could get one to work with VXA320 drives, it still would. The only software I could find that could control one was this strange thing some wierdo's had come up with, called "ADSM". Since I was (for the only time in my life) an actual IBM-ER, I was allowed to order the product. IBM can't charge internally for softwre, but they CAN charge for shipping. A month later, I received a shrink-wrapped pallet that required that the pallet be removed from the pallet mule and scooted through the door, to get to me. On the pallet were 24 boxes. One box contained a CD-ROM, with the software. Each of the other boxes contained packing peanuts,with a single sheet of paper in each.... licenses, keys, warranteees, and other queerbate paperwork. Even so, the 1/4ox payload that they had to ship free was worth every penny wasted in shipping the paperwork. Today, I'd do it again if I had to pay for it myself.
I expect most receipt collector parties would be...
This is the craziest I've ever seen personally.
A box arrived in the mail. It was maybe 10 x 6 x 4 or so. Inside that was a manila envelope. Inside that was a small box, slightly larger than a jewlers ring box. Inside that was a clear plastic pill bottle. Inside that was a small ziploc baggie.
Inside that was ONE styrafoam bead, like from a beanbag chair. it was the replacement foam bead for an anemometer.
If it turned out to have actually contained HP hardware, it would have been a much bigger waste of packaging.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Shhhhh! If they realize that, they'll go and add more to the file! Someone, hide the parent post, fast!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If only there was some sort of shipping company who dealt only in paper documents. They could end waste like this overnight! (or priority, or first class, or media mail)
I used to go to surplus stores a lot to get electronic parts and such. One store in particular had a lot of material from 'failed projects' at a big multinational. It wasn't hard to see in some instances why the project had failed. Things like big totes full of resistors individually packaced in anti-static bags were a sign of the kind of technical prowess of the management of the operation.
I just got hired by HP and I am awaiting for my contract to arrive in the mail. Its taking awhile so I hope its because it will be coming in a huge box like this.
If you'd ever used it, you wouldn't ask that question.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
His point is like a package from HP... Lot's of useless packaging but somewhere in there lies a small kernel of relevance.
Your task is to unpack and find it.
- These characters were randomly selected.
I am a Oracle Magazine subscriber (free magazine, totally useless but great when I need quality paper for packaging). Once they sent a "special edition" magazine with a promotional CD included; it was sent in a standard A4 envelope. Well, the Oracle guys decided it was a really important CD and sent me another copy, just to make sure. It was in a paper CD envelope, like Ubuntu's free CDs, but the paper was much thinner. The paper envelope was put in bubble wrap, and the bubble wrap was put in a cardboard box the size of a 500-page A4 paper pack. The cardboard box was sent as a DHL package, the delivery was priced something like $20-$30 (paid by Oracle). And the best part? The DHL-shipped version arrived a month later than the copy I received with the magazine (and probably was free for Oracle to ship since they already paid for shipping the magazine).
I've had a box the same size for a charger adapter. Perhaps it is the only size of box they have?
Yeah, but he's still trying to find it in the 40-foot tall pyramid of 18" boxes lashed together with packing tape.
I once received a large box from HP containing several smaller boxes of stuff. The final one was one of those 9x12x3 boxes other people have mentioned. Inside it was a single sheet of paper that read, in its entirety: This box intentionally empty.
In that case, I'm joining the Secret Service.