We recently ordered a Think Tank thin belt for our wedding work, We specifically wanted this one as its foldable. It could easily fit in an 8x8x7" shipping box. However, it came in a 3 foot by 9 inch shipping box with 7 or 8 feet of bubble wrap! Ive ordered RF lenses and cameras that hardly get a bubble pillow or two and hopefully they havent deflated. It may seem trivial, but I want to buy from companies that ship expensive electronics with considerable packaging. I find the best packing material is simple brown bags coiled around the gear. Biodegradable too.
I have been satisfied with BH shipping most of the time. My main criteria is whether the products arrive in good condition. Sometimes the outer packaging looks wonky, but the product inside is fine. Others times there sure is extra packaging. But BH is no worse and usually better than any other retailers I've ordered from. Amazon is a complete nightmare for underpackaging and shipping incorrect, missing, broken, or used items, and that sort of garbage.
Im in the Hudson Valley north of my native NYC, and B&Hs shipping is always perfect. Virtually anything ordered, photographic or electronic, arrives well packaged overnight by FedEx.
As far as the bubble wrap, our town has a drop off recycling location(s) specifically for plastic wrap. Once theyve collected 500lbs its picked up and the town receives a Polywood bench.
Just bought a pair of CFe Type A cards in the manufacturer's very minimal packaging (measuring about 3.5 x 2 x 1/4 inches) and it shipped in a 12x9 box stuffed with bubble wrap! A small padded enveloped would have sufficed, but that's B&H for ya and I'd rather that than Amazon's sometimes terrible under-packaging of breakable items.
RoamingScott wrote:
BH will send you an SD card in a 12" square box stuffed to the gills with bubble wrap
A few years ago, I got a back-ordered baby pin (solid steel, short rod) in a 12" box filled with wrapping. All other orders (a few per year) have been normal well-packed.
johnld wrote:
We recently ordered a Think Tank thin belt for our wedding work, We specifically wanted this one as its foldable. It could easily fit in an 8x8x7" shipping box. However, it came in a 3 foot by 9 inch shipping box with 7 or 8 feet of bubble wrap! Ive ordered RF lenses and cameras that hardly get a bubble pillow or two and hopefully they havent deflated. It may seem trivial, but I want to buy from companies that ship expensive electronics with considerable packaging. I find the best packing material is simple brown bags coiled around the gear. Biodegradable too....Show more →
As much as I would prefer something biodegradable, I have little love for crumpled brown paper.
The shipping area where I work has a couple machines that take a roll of smooth brown paper in the back, and rapidly spit a crinkled stream of it out the front, for as long as you hold your foot on the switch. A couple of years back, I had a high current, DC power supply that needed to visit its place of birth for some repair work. Talking about a bulky, $5000 instrument that weighed about 40 pounds. I was told to let our shipping department take care of sending it. About a week later I get a call from the manufacturer indicating the supply arrived completely destroyed. Turns out, it was shipped in a corrugated box, about 20% larger in all dimensions, with maybe 30 feet of crinkled brown paper as padding. Completely insufficient to protect a delicate item of that mass.
Purchased a replacement unit off of Ebay. That unit arrived with 4 plus inches of closed cell foam on all sides, fitted snuggly in a double wall corrugated box, with 1/4" plywood panels top and bottom to protect from incursion. It arrived in fine shape.
Second amusing story. We have measurement intrumentation that needs to take a yearly trip for calibration. The instrument in question consists of an outer metal shell, into which 4 measurement modules fit. We shipped the instrument all together, in costly a Pelican case, which in turn sat inside a cardboard box. The calibration house sent three of the modules back in a different padded cardboard box, the forth was lost for about 6 weeks, the shell in another, and the empty Pelican case in a third box, which also not the box it was shipped in. Too painful to contemplate how that came to pass.
Smile when delicate items are packaged and shipped with attention to detail.
johnld wrote:
We recently ordered a Think Tank thin belt for our wedding work, We specifically wanted this one as its foldable. It could easily fit in an 8x8x7" shipping box. However, it came in a 3 foot by 9 inch shipping box with 7 or 8 feet of bubble wrap! Ive ordered RF lenses and cameras that hardly get a bubble pillow or two and hopefully they havent deflated. It may seem trivial, but I want to buy from companies that ship expensive electronics with considerable packaging. I find the best packing material is simple brown bags coiled around the gear. Biodegradable too....Show more →
Compared to other problems in our world this is pretty minor but Ive had a similar reaction.
For example, I recently ordered a little package of two very small lens caps for a Fujifilm lens. The caps are perhaps 1/4 thick and a little more than an inch in diameter.
They came in a box large enough to hold a couple of camera bodies plus lenses! There was so much bubble wrap inside that I almost couldnt find the lens caps!
To be fair, Ive ordered a decent number of products from B&H over the years including everything from cameras to lenses to (large) printers to computer products, and Ive never had anything actually damaged in transit.
I do wish that more companies would work to minimize packing materials in was appropriate to the products being shipped and that htey would make more use of degradable materials and less of that abominable bubble wrap which seems to not be recyclable. (At least that crinkly paper stuff can go straight into our recycling bin.)
gdanmitchell wrote:
Compared to other problems in our world this is pretty minor but Ive had a similar reaction.
For example, I recently ordered a little package of two very small lens caps for a Fujifilm lens. The caps are perhaps 1/4 thick and a little more than an inch in diameter.
They came in a box large enough to hold a couple of camera bodies plus lenses! There was so much bubble wrap inside that I almost couldnt find the lens caps!
To be fair, Ive ordered a decent number of products from B&H over the years including everything from cameras to lenses to (large) printers to computer products, and Ive never had anything actually damaged in transit.
I do wish that more companies would work to minimize packing materials in was appropriate to the products being shipped and that htey would make more use of degradable materials and less of that abominable bubble wrap which seems to not be recyclable. (At least that crinkly paper stuff can go straight into our recycling bin.)...Show more →
If Mother Teresa and Greta Thunberg were the shipping clerks in charge of materials used, you might get your green solution along with higher price paid for such custom services. More importantly, you could listen in on some great heated arguments.
A few years ago, I had several very poorly packed deliveries from B&H. As soon as I contacted them, the damaged items were immediately replaced. That's how B&H rolls. Soon after, I noticed a trend toward "over" packing most items. My guess is this was due to one individual and B&H did some training and imposed more clear packing policies.
As someone who ships stuff, I know it is preferable to spend a little extra effort and money on better packing rather than have to deal with returning a damaged item. Packaging is mostly reusable if not recyclable. The amount of waste generated by excessive packaging pales in comparison to the environmental cost of damaged electronics or optics being disposed of and multiple additional shipments going back and forth for returns and exchanges.
johnld, I bought my Think Tank Thin Skin belts directly from the company. They used a lot less packing material. Ive been shopping with B&H since 1998, and while things are often overpackaged, products arrive in excellent shape. Nonetheless, Id like less to trash and recycle.
Years ago Amazon here in Canada was shipping bare HDDs in antistatic baggies inside their typical bubblewrap envelope... Then they finally started putting individual HDDs into generic cardboard boxes with 'mounts' to hold the drive in place, which in turn would be packed in a box for shipment. But I discovered during high sales periods, such as Black Friday, Boxing Day, etc., that occasionally it appeared they'd run out of proper packaging and resorted to bare drives in padded envelopes again! I now usually get drives from B&H, but it also hasn't always been ideal. I received an order for two drives about a couple years ago in a box not much larger than the retail boxes the HDDs were packed in, along with a token piece of padding that pretty much ensured the drive boxes were always in contact with the walls of the shipping box. Both HDDs were DOA but B&H was great at replacing them (once they were off backorder).
I agree though that sometimes B&H orders arrive in boxes well oversized for the contents, stuffed full of 'air pillows.'
The HDD manufacturers sometimes ship replacement drives in those drive boxes alone. I've not had any problems with them, but small numbers.
The DOA drives I've had are the ones that were well packaged, and all the ones that were not were fine.
At least BH has been using the drive boxes for several years now as do most retailers that break cases.
Buying a case of 20 is probably the best for OEM drives, but some people don't need that many at one time. You can build 2-3 NAS with one shipment then.
bwcolor wrote:
If Mother Teresa and Greta Thunberg were the shipping clerks in charge of materials used, you might get your green solution along with higher price paid for such custom services. More importantly, you could listen in on some great heated arguments.
A company that ships a ton of stuff like B&H could certainly manage to put a small box or envelope on the shelves in the shipping department alongside the big stuff.
The inconsistency is apparent if you get enough stuff. Sometimes the small items WILL come in an envelope from companies like this, yet at other times someone just grabbed the nearest gigantic box and crammed in some bubble wrap.
Hi everyone. All this feedback is appreciated. We try our very best to ship the products as securely and as environmentally friendly as possible. There are abnormal cases sometimes like the OP's but we strive to minimize those. I will share your feedback with our warehouse.
This is not exclusive to B/H, but if items that are exchanged or returned like new with all the original items because the buyer decided they wanted another model, this model could be sold as new, again. Packaging and shipping boxes are sometimes re-used, but often theyre not. B/H has also started using shipping boxes that you have to pull a tab right down the center of the box, ensuring that you cannot reuse this particular box for shipping of any item or if needing to send to B/H. It puts a hiccup in the recycle chain as I always keep shipping boxes to reuse if needed, but now have to use a different shipping box altogether if needed. Our throwaway culture and planned obsolescence together with Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Flash sales and other gimmicks insure well have plenty of crap to load in the bins.
I just recieved a lens from them, the lens box was wrapped in bubble wrap & the packing material was air bubble. The odd part was the lens box was in one corner & the rest of the shipping box was full of bubble wrap. My past experience with B&H is a good one when it comes shipping the items I ordered from them. They're better thank Amazon.
johnld wrote:
We recently ordered a Think Tank thin belt for our wedding work, We specifically wanted this one as its foldable. It could easily fit in an 8x8x7" shipping box. However, it came in a 3 foot by 9 inch shipping box with 7 or 8 feet of bubble wrap! Ive ordered RF lenses and cameras that hardly get a bubble pillow or two and hopefully they havent deflated. It may seem trivial, but I want to buy from companies that ship expensive electronics with considerable packaging. I find the best packing material is simple brown bags coiled around the gear. Biodegradable too....Show more →
