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Amazon Launches "Frustration-Free Packaging"
mallumax notes Amazon's new Frustration-Free Packaging initiative. Over several years the retailer hopes to convince many of its suppliers to offer consumer-friendlier packaging. It's starting with just 19 products from Mattel, Fisher-Price, Microsoft, and Transcend. Until this program spreads to more products, better get one of these (ThinkGeek and Slashdot share a corporate overlord). From Amazon's announcement: "The Frustration-Free Package is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It's designed to be opened without the use of a box cutter or knife and will protect your product just as well as traditional packaging. Products with Frustration-Free Packaging can frequently be shipped in their own boxes, without an additional shipping box. Amazon works directly with manufacturers to box products in Frustration-Free Packages right off the assembly lines, which reduces the overall amount of packing materials used."
I heard this product mentioned elsewhere. It's inexpensive enough that I'm thinking of buying one and asking a cashier to keep it under their counter at a local electronics store I frequent.
That thing on thinkgeek is a piece of crap. It's a flimsy knife with a weird handle. This is much more effective. And cheaper (since you get three). And you can cut metal with them. They're called tin snips. AKA, the manly alternative to the overpiced ones designed by and for women.
Question everything
Because it practically requires bladed weapons to open.
That's the wrong tool for the job. Use a small pair of tin snips, and there's very little chance that you'll injure yourself. (Making packages that require tin snips to open is still stupid, though.)
Um, what? Of course they'll use it to cut prices. Unlike some companies, Amazon is in a competitive field. And when people are shopping online, it's trivial to comparison shop, so people do. There are plenty of other online retailers selling the same stuff as them, and one of the reasons Amazon does well is that they're cheaper. Sure, they want more profit -- but once they find a way to cut costs, the optimal way to make more profit is to pass some of that cost savings along as a price reduction, in order to attract more customers. Remember, there are two ways to increase profits -- increase margins, and increase units sold. In highly competitive markets, the optimal use for any cost cutting measure will be a mix of the two.
Sure, you won't see the whole reduction passed along (at least not until everyone is doing it and they can't afford not to), but who cares? The stuff gets cheaper, and friendlier for the environment, and less frustrating to open. I rather like this idea.
I've found so far, best way to get it off...is run a sharp knife under it cutting it on edge..leaving enough room to try to peel each half off in one motion.
This stuff sucks when you try taking it off in the car to listen to it...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why is it people are sued for their coffee being too hot... but people haven't sued the crap out of corporations for packages that quite frankly maim their customers?
The ladder is frivolous in comparison. The coffee case has largely been misrepresented in popular media. Liebeck, the plaintiff, suffered third degree burns on her thighs, buttocks, and genitals. She required 8 days of hospitalization, skin grafts, and $11,000 in medical bills. Liebeck first sought to settle out of court for $20,000 to cover said bills. When McDonalds countered with a $800 offer, Liebeck took the case to court.
There have been frivolous lawsuits, definitely true. The scalding coffee was not. Other coffee vendors around the city were, at the highest temperature, 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than McDonald's coffee.
Main source.
You expect hot coffee to be well, hot. It's supposed to be freshly boiled water. Otherwise it is luke warm.
You cook pies at a temperature of 350 F, but you don't serve them to people right out of the oven. Why does coffee get a free pass to be served at temperatures that cause third degree burns in only 2-7 seconds of contact, as in the famous McDonald's case?
It would be one thing if McDonald's was selling cups of molten lava with a warning that clearly said, "Don't let the stuff touch you until it cools, you freaking morons!" but one generally expects FOOD to be safe to touch to your body.
Also, it should be easy to add cream and sugar to a cup of coffee without dumping it all over yourself. McDonald's had bad lid design in that respect too. Furthermore, documents produced in court showed the McD's was well aware of the fact that other customers had suffered third degree burns from their product and continued to sell it in an unsafe manner. They even alleged in court that people who buy coffee mostly take it home or to work and drink it there instead of in the court (which frankly doesn't pass the laugh test).
No, McDonald's was clearly negligent, if not reckless, in their behavior and deserved to be punished for it. Coffee isn't a product that should be that risky to purchase and consume. How exactly does serving coffee at 185 F do anything positive for the customer?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I can tell you have never worked in retail management. Now you have to a) train all your cashiers not simple "call a manager/whatever to open the lockup case," but rather at least two (or maybe more) tiers of "if customer wants x, call manager, but if customer wants y, call Joe the Department Manager, but if customer wants z, call Barb the Head Cashier." You also have to train the manager, Joe, and Barb in all this, as well. And no training is perfect (and cashier and sales rarely make more than minimum wage, with expected effects on their skill set), so you also back up the lines with each error made. Plus, you now have multiple lockup cases, which a) require more management to keep functioning properly, and b) require yet more multiple levels of training, different for different employees, as to what goes in which case.
Plus, you're now gow multiple sets of security systems, all different, to maintain, both physically, and as part of your security policy.
All in an industry with a net profit margin under 5%, and often under 3%.
If you've never run a retail store, you cannot even imagine the value of economy of scale, and consistenty in training across all employee positions. And few things cost you money faster than a stoppage at a cash register because the minimum wage cashier can't remember who has the key to the right lockup case (or even which lockup case the goods are in).
I dunno about you, but I've found a fair percentage of these packages won't cut very easily with standard scissors, sometimes even if you are just trying to cut through a single layer of plastic, let alone the edges where the sides are welded together. I've even basically broken a pair of scissors trying to cut the damn things. I go for my utility knife or diagonal cutters any more.
Are you kidding me? You're offering a ridiculous strawman.
Two tiers.
Tier 1 product is not on the floor (just displays). The actual product is not brought out until after purchase. Or is only brought out when a purchase is intended and is accompanied by an employee until the purchase is complete.
Tier 2 product is on the floor in a locked box. It gets opened during purchase at the register using a key attached to the register.
Simple. Easy. Trainable. Secure.
Oh, did I mention that's how retailers are actually doing it right now?
From your source (which happens to be a tort lawyer's website):
That was the center of their case. The plaintiff brought in "experts" that claimed this was too hot, and introduced some evidence that supposedly showed that competitors sold cooler coffee.
The fact (actual scientific fact, not legal fact) of the matter is, coffee should be brewed at around 200F and served at about 180F to properly dissolve the essences that make coffee taste like coffee. There's an ANSI standard (ANSI CM-1-1986) that says so. Industrial coffee machines (like the ones that McDonalds and practically everyone else uses) are designed to work at that temperature, because of the standard and because that's what makes the best coffee.
An interesting consequence of that temperature is that it does severe damage to human skin. However it is perfectly reasonable to assume that coffee would be at that temperature, and totally unreasonable to sue and claim that that temperature was unusually hot.
The only negligent thing McDonalds did was hire a defense lawyer who failed to discover and introduce basic documented evidence.