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.
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
When working for a spin-off of HP, we did a licence audit and decided we needed 500 or so C++ compiler licences for compliance. Order them. Expect a single A4 sheet back saying we're covered.
Instead, we get a pair of huge 2m x 2m x 2m boxes, on shipping palets, containing 500 smaller A4-sized cardboard boxes, each containing an A4 paper licence. This was soul-destroying fail of the highest level and led me down the path to BOFH-dom.
Recycling cardboard is often worse for the environment than not recycling. Landfills sequester carbon and recycling uses harsh chemicals AND WILL SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THIS DAMN COMMENT WINDOW BUG!?
Actually I thought DEC just got chewed up and spat out.
I can recall getting DEC licence paks in envelopes, and reasonably sized boxes of CDs. I don't recall anything excessive at all.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Indeed. If you look at the second picture, the A4 sheets were "license entitlement certificates". It brought back a lot of memories for me as an HP-UX admin also.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If the hardware worked, the drivers were ridiculous.
I have been to error code hell. I have breathed the toner.
This company stole years off my life and I WANT THEM BACK!
.
I repeat: 1 roll of scotch tape in an huge box full of peanuts. Shipping was free.
P.S. I have have the receipt but not a picture of the box as it was in 2006.
You know, it could be HP's way of getting some Unboxing love (or something similar -- like this article, perhaps). Free marketing, in other words, due to the curiosity of the packaging.
Harold
Look at the packaging for a few screws!
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Someone named John Robson commented on the story linked by the Slashdot story. He said, "HP should be penalised for that."
No need to worry, John. HP is in a Slashdot story. There will be very capable people, I think, who say to themselves, "Maybe I should apply for a job at HP. Nah, maybe not."
The parent comment says, "My experience[s] with HP have been increasingly disappointing. Recently..."
That's been our experience, too. HP seems to be getting a little better, however, now that Carly Fiorina has left. Before, it was REALLY ugly.
How does excessive packaging happen? It happens because people become so unhappy working for a company that they slip into becoming robotic drones. Nothing matters. They just try to get through each day. Illogical packaging is only one of the many, many illogical things that happen every day. Those people never go to hell, because if they arrive there, Satan says, "You've suffered enough. You don't belong here."
There may be a reason behind the practice of shipping single sheets of paper individually boxed. It makes them look important. This policy may have been established following an important customer accidentally tossing licenses or keys out while unpacking s/w manuals and media.
Have gnu, will travel.
HP has given me boxes that size for 4 screws in a plastic bag, wrapped in foam. Repeatedly.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
That statement did not sit well with me, so I did some research. Wikipedia seems to indicate that a good chunk of the deforestation done is to produce paper.
Personally, I think hemp should be more commonly used to create paper. It grows quickly, and has many uses. Hell, even the US constitution is written on hemp.
While I'm not familiar with how Greenpeace came up with its ranking, I do know that the book "Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World" by David Imhoff included an anecdote that HP reduced packaging and lowered supply-chain losses and costs all in one.
Instead of shipping printers (perhaps only a certain model or type) in individually-packaged boxes on skids, HP had a tray-like thing (like what you get at a fast food place for drinks) that held many printers. This was then wrapped with clear skid wrapping.
Because they weren't boxed individually, you could fit many more on each skid. Because the contents were visible from the outside, forklift operators were more careful and there was less damage in warehouses.
It is very likely that HP pre-packages its licenses in these boxes, and the economics of it probably works out that most of them are sent individually. It is thus simpler for them to send out many individually-packaged boxes to customers who purchase multiple licenses, than to have someone remove the papers from the boxes in the warehouse, find an appropriate envelope to put them in, and then do something with the box.
You, the customer, would no longer get the many boxes, but they would probably be used and discarded further up before they get to you, analogous to when recycling bins get emptied into the same dumpster as the trash.
- RG>
(the "idle" comment form is really weird in SeaMonkey)
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Wow! Looks like HP has gotten more efficient in their shipping.
About ten years ago I get back from lunch to find a huge box at my desk. Typical workstation plus monitor size box from HP with a shipping label was like 4ft+ cube. Was not exactly sure what it was so got to openning it. Inside that box was another slightly smaller box also with a shipping label listing one HP address to another HP address. This went on for quite a while til I got to a small box with padding. (If I recall the stuff have been shipped a total of 5 times adding several boxes each time) Inside that box was a large manila envelope. Inside manila envelope was a white envelope (or might have been the other way around) it has been a while. Inside that was a single 5" by 6" sheet of paper with a single license for the HP-UX 9 C++ compiler.
I had order 5 licenses... the next day another of the licenses came, though at least the outer box was not quite as large. I often wondered if it was either that there shipping system was set up for just sending license keys or if they really wanted to make sure that piece of paper didn't get lost in the mail.
The other odd thing was the licenses didn't include any serial numbers or what not, just the B code number for the software and a statement about it being 1 license.
It is very likely that HP pre-packages its licenses in these boxes, and the economics of it probably works out that most of them are sent individually. It is thus simpler for them to send out many individually-packaged boxes to customers who purchase multiple licenses, than to have someone remove the papers from the boxes in the warehouse, find an appropriate envelope to put them in, and then do something with the box.
The question is thus why are HP "pre-packing" them in boxes, rather than envelopes, in the first place?
I remember getting a set of VMS manuals from Digital. It was a very large box, very heavy (a set of VMS manuals weighed over a hundred pounds.) The books didn't fix the box exactly, and in the box was another box, empty, labeled "Empty Filler Box".
-- Of course I'm paranoid. I'm a sysadmin.
I have been getting the smaller boxes with my MSDN subscription lately. They are just a little bigger than the actual sleeve size and, generally, only about ¾" deep. They usually contain up to a half dozen DVDs at a time. I would *guess* that they're just a wee bit bigger than the actual space needed. Side note: MSDN ships out their DVDs from a third party company as you may already know. I am not positive but it could well be that different regions get different packaging materials.
Oh, and on another topic, this box is way too small to type in reasonably.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Paper also takes energy to produce, as well as recycle. Of course, as the moment something is of interest to environmentalists both the pro and anti sides immediately dash out, cherry pick the data they like from the scientific literature, and then declare the extremes of the range all over the internet, it's very hard to get an accurate assessment of which is better in energy terms by googling - you'll get the extremes and the puff pieces. But to change the views from the consensus does require clear proof (I need numbers, not just people saying it is so in their books), and that appears to be lacking.
Both production and recycling consume water, and use chemicals. But I've regularly seen the claim that recycling uses less chemicals than from virgin wood (including in peer reviewed academic journals), and very rarely seen it the other way around. I'd need a cite from a believable source with evidence that they've actually measured it rather than just declared it.
Paper isn't purely made from trees. There's usually other stuff in it as well (e.g. chalk, china clay).
I work in a decent sized HP IT shop and this happens to us all the time as well. On many occasions we have ordered RAM for servers and find that a single stick of RAM is double boxed in boxes the size of boxes that dell uses to ship entire computers. On top of that if we order multiple sticks of ram, they all end up in separate boxes, no combined shipping. I'm surprised nobody is looking into this because it could be a HUGE cost savings for a company like HP to do shipping more efficiently.
A while ago, our company ordered an upgraded protocol license for some Intel telecommunications gear.
A few days later, a big box shows up -- I think a 2 x 2 x 2 foot cube. In that box was a wad of packing peanuts, as well as a padded envelope...
When we opened the envelope, we expected to find a license button, which would be physically installed in our equipment. There would be no reason to ship that in a large box, but at least a license button would have been some tangible product that justified shipping.
Alas, the envelope contained no license button after all. Instead, it contained a single sheet of paper complete with instructions on how to access a web site, and a validation code to use. That validation code would then give us an actual license key, which we could then enter into our equipment to unlock the extra protocol features (that were already built in to the equipment).
I can't quite put my finger on it, but something seems a little wasteful here... I'm *sure* if somebody thought hard about this, they could probably find a way to do the whole thing electronically...
Free advertising about how wasteful and inefficient they are. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. For dell.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
One reason for using boxes is that they are harder to steal by dropping them in a pocket. But ONE of those inner boxes would have sufficed without being complete overkill. Though common sense calls for a 9x12 envelope or mailer.
Many companies send far more important documents in ordinary envelopes by courier.
I believe the notion of shipping licenses in boxes started at Digital Equipment Corporation. The idea was that by shipping it in a box, it was less likely to be thrown away (as "worthless paperwork") before reaching the technical person who would understand its value. That idea seems to have survived two changes of corporate ownership, so maybe it's correct.
Dell has in the past used foam padded boxes to ship sticky rubber feet. They tended to have one foot each, manually cut from a larger carrier, in a box. If they sent 4 feet, you'd get 4 boxes, each as a separate UPS shipment.
It's not just overseas mail... international mail TO the US suffers that way, also. A few years ago, my father tried to send me a box of chocolates from Europe (Belgian chocolates, sent from England). Like a fair amount of my overseas mail (and my baggage, every time I fly here! I should've known better than to study the effects of terrorism on a democracy for my Master's - and admit it once to an immigration official who promptly searched me!), it arrived with a little slip indicating that it had been inspected. The box of chocolates was intact with one minor detail: all the chocolate was gone! A perfectly formed box, re-taped shut... but no chocolate.
Last Christmas, I talked to a few (usually also immigrants) people who had their Christmas purchases in the US arrive opened, also.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
Well, they do say there's no such thing as bad publicity.
America, Home of the Brave.
When I was doing my BS in Bio, one of the profs had a contract to do research for SE Asia - where they do grow hemp for textiles & rope. There were at least 4 Bankers Boxes of paperwork for this project - along with a security greenhouse.
Radioactive materials could be had from the Physics supply closet by asking the work study kid at the window.
Sarcasm is dead. There is no possible way that Chrisje was serious. Any rational person with even a limited exposure to computers and a vague understanding of software would realize that there is no excuse for this type of wasteful packaging behavior from a technology company in this day and age. That comment is ROFLMAO comical. This is *Slashdot*. Have none of you mods ever been around *software*? All this talk of part numbers and order handling and logistics for a tiny bit of *data on paper*? You realize, don't you, that HP could modify the program that generates the data on paper to group, print, and ship rationally? You realize that other companies long, long ago solved this problem, using software? Obviously somebody at some point in their process knew this stuff was all going to the same location at the same time. That's a great place to start looking for how to prevent this particular criminal packaging stupidity. Solving this problem isn't even hard. It just takes the realization that it is a problem, and it can be solved. Chrisje undoubtedly realizes this, and produced a masterful bit of sarcasm, which went right over your heads.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
HP has given me boxes that size for 4 screws in a plastic bag, wrapped in foam. Repeatedly.
If they do this so regularly as your comment and many others seem to suggest, I just cannot help but wonder: How do things go so wrong to begin with? Also, one would think that the errors of their ways ought to be completely obvious to anyone involved, so whyever do they not fix it?
I used to work at a facility that built and shipped out equipment for HP as well as a couple of other major computer firms, and HP had the most ridiculous requirements from start to finish for their products. The packaging was perhaps the most absurd. I can confirm what everyone else has said, that this is standard operating procedure for HP. An HP representative once explained to me that they did this because "presentation is very important to our customers." I couldn't imagine that the customers would care if their package arrived with tape that was an inch lower on one side than on the other, but those were the sorts of things we'd get dinged on if a box were shipped out like that. I mean... crooked tape on a cardboard box, and someone would be out there yelling at the poor shipping guys.
And yes, we shipped out pieces of paper in cardboard boxes packed in cardboard boxes too. Yes, the shipping department knew what was in them... sometimes they were the ones putting the paper in the box to start with. We all thought it was ridiculously stupid, but the last thing anybody wanted was an HP representative out there, angry and questioning the wisdom of their contract with our company to handle their stuff for them. So we shipped the stuff out like that.
Oh, and the other two companies we were contracted out to? They pretty much were happy as long as the right stuff got to the right place on time and undamaged. Beyond that they more or less left it up to us to handle shipping procedures.