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.

Comments

Personally experienced _much_ worse

[Anonymous Coward]

(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.

Re:Personally experienced _much_ worse

[johannesg]

lol... paying for a C++ compiler.

You're funny, I like you.

People did this in the old days. I once paid for the ACC compiler as well (I guess that's the one), because GCC was "open source" which was utterly distrusted by everyone. How times have changed - now the place is full of Linux systems, the few remaining HPUX machines will be replaced as soon as is convenient, and Sun? The only one I've seen in the last five years is the one in the sky.

ACC, while a bit shaky in its implementation of the C++ standard, at least produced great error messages. Typically it did not just tell you what was wrong and where, but also what it thought you needed to change to fix it. And mostly it got it right too!

"In file xxx on line yy, function FooBarBaz is undefined. Maybe you meant to call function FooBarBoz?"

Really, all it was missing was an interactive mode where you could just tell it to change the source for you...

Office Depot is pretty close

[Large Bogon Collider]

I had one almost as bad. About 1 year ago, I ordered a storage Fotochute for $99.99. I had a $20 off of $100 coupon and so I padded the bill with a roll of transparent tape at $0.98. Howwever, the Fotochute was permanently of out of stock so that only thing that was shipped was the roll of tape $0.98 - $0.19 discount = $0.79 with free shipping. That is understandable, but what wasn't was the fact that it came in a 1' x 1.5' x 2' box full of styrofoam peanuts.

.

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.

Dell isn't much better, though

[ghoti]

Look at the packaging for a few screws!

How does excessive packaging happen?

[Futurepower(R)]

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."

Re:Nothing new here

[RealGrouchy]

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)