Offbeat: Buy.com and Nokia hate the environment, apparently
Last week Tuesday, Buy.com had a What’s Shakin’ deal on a neat little Nokia BH-208 Bluetooth ear-piece and car adapter for something around 12.99USD. I plugged in my Paypal details and was done with it.
Despite choosing the cheapest (free) shipping, I received the package in about 2 days. Pretty neat. But I was shocked to see such a large box delivered. After removing the protective plastic (was a wet day), I checked, re-checked, and triple checked the box to ensure it was mine and wasn’t ticking. Everything checked out.
I got the closest knife and cut into the box, revealing the usual paper-based filling. Before I removed the paper turd, I started thinking – what the hell did I order? This earpiece will fit in my ear right? *gulp*
With the paper removed, I dove into the box and recovered a large rectangular mold of plastic. It contained the Nokia ear-piece in its original packaging as well as the bolt-on car charger. I can understand why Nokia couldn’t re-design the original packaging to fit the new accessory – they need to rid themselves of existing stock – but was a little shocked to see the amount of wasted space here. And all for a mere cord…
Thankfully, it wasn’t that impossible-to-open-without-cutting-yourself-badly plastic. In fact, it was already nearly open when I removed it from the box. The contents? The ear piece, charger, and a small folded up piece of paper with 30-different-language boiler-plate legalese written all over it.
As a result of Nokia’s laze, yielding a larger-than-necessary package for such a tiny product, it appears Buy.com upgraded to the next largest box in its arsenal – Gigantor. Despite their Go Green initiative, Buy.com has zero stock of an in-between medium-sized box. This means you either get Cute n’ Small or Ridiculously Gigantic.
Unreal.
To conclude on a happier note, however, I promise to do my part and recycle all these materials.
/submits to the consumerist
I get my purchases like this all the time from several online retailers. I just throw it all in the recycling bin and hope I did my part to save this filthy world.
If you think this is bad, stay away from HP. Sometimes they need a pallet to send their goods:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/
More HP packaging from the same site:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/21/more_hp_packaging/
Well, at least you didn’t order from NewEgg or you would have a crapton of packing peanuts that you wouldn’t know what to do with.
This is indicative of not just Buy.com but MOST sites that do Internet sales and shipping. New Egg sent memory modules for my laptop in a box that could ship shoes. These companies moan about losing money but they piss it away with shipping simple things in oversized boxes. Maybe it is just me but I think they could certainly THINK about how they do this part of their business.
:*)
Hey, at least it was well protected in transit. And we don’t know that it costs them more to use the bigger box. Maybe they ultimately save money by not stocking a lot of different sizes of boxes? Anyway, you did the right thing. You recycled it. And you gave us an entertaining post. :-)
Maybe Buy.com and Nokia have just not drank the Enviro Koolaid. Maybe they refuse to submit to the new religion just as I do not.
Hippie.
For the Nokia part, that’s a habit a lot of companies has: just look at your Kellogg’s cereal box the content will often take half the size of the box, or look at all other food stuff (Chips, tacos and so on): the bigger the box or package is, hopefully more potential customers will see the product.
And that’s it for a lot of produts, look for example the pens or pencils: a huge package for something relatively small in fact.
As for the delivery package, it is possible too that the retailer don’t want any problem with the shipping, and so they think that the more the safer.
But it is true that both (well, in fact all of us), we should do an effort.
Lame post… The package comes on whatever they think should come. Unless you wanted to get a broken piece of pastik with no bluethooth set…
I build systems for people, and usually purchase everything from newegg… I usually end up taking the box for the case, and filling it with packing peanuts, then when that box is full, you can always take an old bedsheet, and stitch up 3 sides, and fill it with peanuts from 3 or 4 systems, and make a giant beanbag for you to relax on while you are “preparing yourself for the coming times when defending one’s self from zombies will be top priority” (Left 4 Dead)
I am glad for all the boxes though… I get to move end of the school year!
Despite the packing, Nokia is still the most green electronic manufacturer in the world:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up
[offtopic]
@rafael: Did you compile a new set of auto elevate lists for the latest sets of windows 7 builds (7048, 7057, 7068, 7077)?
I like it plenty of junk to get my wood stove going in the morning, since the newspaper isn’t worth getting anymore. Greenpeace has been a joke since the founder left it, kind of like the Sierra Club and other idiots who will have us spending billions to bring wind and solar power up to 2% from the 1% its at now. Just build nukes and give us real power. Oops sorry off topic.