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Amazon's fulfilment has also become shockingly bad. Most items are shipped in lightly-padded manila envelopes resulting in high percentage of damaged goods if y

Amazon's fulfilment has also become shockingly bad. Most items are shipped in lightly-padded manila envelopes resulting in high percentage of damaged goods if you order books[1], CDs/DVDs/BluRays, video games, or anything else where the packaging is part of the product. eBay is a much better experience in this regard. [1] In an ironic twist, I absolutely refuse to buy books from Amazon anymore.

izzydata 7y ago
I've received many damaged books from Amazon. Whenever I report the items as being damaged I am prepared with photographs of the damaged goods as proof, but they always send me another one without caring. It just feels so wasteful to save money by mishandling everything to the point where it doesn't even matter if stuff breaks because it is cheaper to try a 2nd time.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  It also flies in the face of Amazon's promise of convenience and "2-day delivery" guarantees when you have to have the same item shipped to you twice and make the trip to the post office to return the first one.
  - thiagomgd 7y ago
    when I bough a TV on Amazon, the screen was broke. I asked for another, and the replacement... has a broken screen. Returned both, and bought for $50 more on Bestbuy, but it came intact
    - chihuahua 7y ago
      For huge things like TVs I think it makes more sense to buy in in person at BestBuy or Costco. Costco's return policy alone is a big advantage. Plus they have so many TVs in the store where you can see them in operation.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    That's if they can reliably deliver it in the first place. They kept mis-delivering or losing packages so much that I took my $5000/year spend elsewhere.
  - LordDragonfang 7y ago
    In my experience, Amazon doesn't usually make you return damaged items unless they're very expensive. I got a set of free wireless earbuds a couple months back because a previous resident of my apartment accidentally delivered their package to us, and when I called Amazon they told me to just keep it.
- dangus 7y ago
  But you don't actually know that this practice is wasteful. That all depends on the numbers. Let's say that Amazon sends out 100 books, and 1 or 2 get damaged. But if they add some extra bit of packaging to every single one of those 100 books, zero will get damaged. Did this save cost or materials? I don't know, it depends on how much extra packaging was needed, whether the damage was serious enough to initiate a refund/re-send, and whether adding packaging to every single order was less environmentally impactful than having to print and send an extra book to those who received damaged ones. It's going to be a simple dollar value equation for companies like Amazon, and make no mistake, they have the data and have made these decisions consciously.
  - fenwick67 7y ago
    I think the poster may have meant "a waste of a good book" not "a waste of money". It's like how throwing produce away at the grocery store is "a waste" but the system is cost-effective.
    - LordDragonfang 7y ago
      The environmental impact of extra plastic packaging is much greater than the impact of compostable produce. And anyway, if Amazon has to ship extra books, they pay the publisher an extra time, and you can always donate the damaged book as well.
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    > It's going to be a simple dollar value equation for companies like Amazon, and make no mistake, they have the data and have made these decisions consciously. I suspect they're not counting the damage this is doing to their brand. I've kept items that were slightly damaged, but it slowly eroded my trust in Amazon. Now I avoid Amazon if I can help it.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    If it's a simple dollar-value calculation on the part of Amazon, then it's sure to be wasteful, in that negative externalities will be ignored.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > but they always send me another one without caring. Had something like that happen to me, and for the product, it was a shock. I had ordered the item, it said it was delivered, but it never made it to me. I contact CS (via chat) and they said they would send out another one. I said ok - what happens if the old one shows up in the meantime. They told me to keep it. A few days later I got the original item (it had been shipped to a completely wrong address via USPS). Then a few weeks later I got the "new" one. So now I have two of them. The item? A Tamiya Grasshopper kit.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    They still make those??
- JohnFen 7y ago
  To be honest, I've never received a damaged book or CD from Amazon in those padded envelopes. I really prefer them over the boxes, because they seem less wasteful.
sp332 7y ago
> eBay is a much better experience Wouldn't this be down to the individual seller?
- osamagirl69 7y ago
  Yes, but ebay sellers have a reputation to maintain so sellers that stoop to amazon levels of idiocy when packing their products don't last long.
- soupfordummies2 7y ago
  Yes, but eBay sort of self-selects for better sellers and you can also see the seller's profile, feedback etc. Half the time on Amazon it's hard to even tell anything. As someone else said, books are REALLY bad. It's a gamble as to what you actually receive sometimes.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Amazon has basically turned itself into eBay but without a way to check the reputation of a seller.
    - sp332 7y ago
      Right under the "Buy it now" button, it says "sold by X and fulfilled by Amazon", or "ships from and sold by X". If you click on X it shows you seller feedback. It's an extra click compared to eBay and it's not ideal, but it's hardly impossible.
      - specialp 7y ago
        Yeah but that's the issue. On eBay the seller has their feedback rating displayed prominently. On Amazon it is sold by <insert English odd word combo> "company" that nobody pays attention to as the ratings are on the product, and it indicates that the product you will get doesn't depend on who sells it really. It is also fulfilled by Amazon so you know you will get it fast. So the consumer basically considers the seller as a wholesaler (which they essentially are in this arrangement, and don't care.
rbritton 7y ago
eBay has become my first stop for many categories of goods. It's not always the best choice, but it is often enough that it's worth checking. For example, both of my carbon monoxide detectors expired at the same time, and Amazon and local box stores wanted something like $70 each for replacements. On eBay I found the same model new in box for half of that from what I think was a fire system installation company.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
  Sellers are fleeing eBay in droves because eBay and PayPal always side with the customer, even in blatantly fraudulent cases. More than half of the orders I've placed on eBay in the past year have been cancelled by eBay or PayPal because they detected fraud from the seller. I can't be bothered to keep wasting my time and money on a site that is hardly even a shadow of what it used to be. Amazon suffers the same,but slightly different problems. As such I've had no choice but to revert back to shopping in person, or in many cars simply skip out on purchasing things I could have readily found on eBay or Amazon five years ago for good prices without hassle. Somewhere eBay and Amazon have completely dropped the ball. I hope it effects their bottom line soon because the second hand stores near me are junk.
viburnum 7y ago
Me too. I bought a rare $80 art book from amazon and the first two were badly damaged from shipping and the third was just a little damaged so I gave up and took it. I was worried they would deactivate my account for being a troublemaker or something.
Apocryphon 7y ago
Ironically as well, I tend to use alternative sites to buy books. I prefer ThriftBooks and Powells for secondhand used books, and Barnes and Noble for new ones (of which I buy only on sale). What do people here use?
- graywh 7y ago
  I've been buying used copies of the paperbacks my kids need for school from discoverbooks.com they often have notes, highlighting, and dogears -- perfect for our use-case
tentboy 7y ago
Yep. Got a BluRay recently with a badly cracked case because it shipped in little more than a paper envelope, and im sure was chucked up my front steps from 10 feet away. I usually buy them from Best Buy's online site which always seems to have the same price as amazon now
AmVess 7y ago
I received two nvme ssd's in a padded envelope. They could easily have been destroyed. They delivered a $500 video card by slapping a shipping sticker on the product box and shipping it that way. On the other hand, I received a $12 box of wet wipes that came in a giant, nicely padded box. The product itself was in a sturdy box. $400 dollars worth of computer storage was shipped improperly, but Amazon made sure I got my box of wet wipes safe and sound! More often than not, I receive small items in giant boxes. Amazon used to ship one order in one box, now they ship one order in many boxes. I don't know how much waste Amazon generates with lazy packaging, but it must be a colossal amount.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  It's funny how they hide behind the "Frustration Free" packaging which ends up being pretty frustrating. I just ordered a Dymo printer and they slapped a sticker on the original box that ended up completely destroyed (and I had it delivered to a locker via amazons own delivery people).
- cr0sh 7y ago
  Regarding your video card, there wasn't an option to have it re-packed in an Amazon box? Usually for items that will ship with external facing identifiable product information, they will give you the option (a checkbox) to have it packed inside an Amazon box...
- amznthrowaway4 7y ago
  Your video card would be shipped in that fashion if the product was certified SIOC (Ships In Own Container); wherein the seller certifies that their packaging is adequate to ship to the customer with only cosmetic damage to the packaging. For SIOC products, I believe there's always an option to include an Amazon box _around_ the original box, however it's optional because that second box is considered to be waste, as the product packaging is already supposed to be good enough for shipping purposes.
- m463 7y ago
  I ordered two cr2032 cells, and received them in a huge box with a lithium battery sticker. I suspected the box was chosen so large because of the sticker size, not the product size (which was about 1"x2"x1/8")
Pxtl 7y ago
The other problem with those mailers is that they're not recyclable. They're plastic mixed with paper, meaning they're neither. Like, if you order a huge item from amazon, it will come in 2 feet of normal recyclable cardboard. But if you order books? They send them in those ridiculous mailers.
m463 7y ago
I recently bought a new book from amazon, and it was thrown in with the rest of my order, causing the pages to be folded over at an angle. sigh.

izzydata 7y ago

I've received many damaged books from Amazon. Whenever I report the items as being damaged I am prepared with photographs of the damaged goods as proof, but they always send me another one without caring. It just feels so wasteful to save money by mishandling everything to the point where it doesn't even matter if stuff breaks because it is cheaper to try a 2nd time.

AlexandrB 7y ago
It also flies in the face of Amazon's promise of convenience and "2-day delivery" guarantees when you have to have the same item shipped to you twice and make the trip to the post office to return the first one.
- thiagomgd 7y ago
  when I bough a TV on Amazon, the screen was broke. I asked for another, and the replacement... has a broken screen. Returned both, and bought for $50 more on Bestbuy, but it came intact
  - chihuahua 7y ago
    For huge things like TVs I think it makes more sense to buy in in person at BestBuy or Costco. Costco's return policy alone is a big advantage. Plus they have so many TVs in the store where you can see them in operation.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  That's if they can reliably deliver it in the first place. They kept mis-delivering or losing packages so much that I took my $5000/year spend elsewhere.
- LordDragonfang 7y ago
  In my experience, Amazon doesn't usually make you return damaged items unless they're very expensive. I got a set of free wireless earbuds a couple months back because a previous resident of my apartment accidentally delivered their package to us, and when I called Amazon they told me to just keep it.
dangus 7y ago
But you don't actually know that this practice is wasteful. That all depends on the numbers. Let's say that Amazon sends out 100 books, and 1 or 2 get damaged. But if they add some extra bit of packaging to every single one of those 100 books, zero will get damaged. Did this save cost or materials? I don't know, it depends on how much extra packaging was needed, whether the damage was serious enough to initiate a refund/re-send, and whether adding packaging to every single order was less environmentally impactful than having to print and send an extra book to those who received damaged ones. It's going to be a simple dollar value equation for companies like Amazon, and make no mistake, they have the data and have made these decisions consciously.
- fenwick67 7y ago
  I think the poster may have meant "a waste of a good book" not "a waste of money". It's like how throwing produce away at the grocery store is "a waste" but the system is cost-effective.
  - LordDragonfang 7y ago
    The environmental impact of extra plastic packaging is much greater than the impact of compostable produce. And anyway, if Amazon has to ship extra books, they pay the publisher an extra time, and you can always donate the damaged book as well.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  > It's going to be a simple dollar value equation for companies like Amazon, and make no mistake, they have the data and have made these decisions consciously. I suspect they're not counting the damage this is doing to their brand. I've kept items that were slightly damaged, but it slowly eroded my trust in Amazon. Now I avoid Amazon if I can help it.
- wpietri 7y ago
  If it's a simple dollar-value calculation on the part of Amazon, then it's sure to be wasteful, in that negative externalities will be ignored.
cr0sh 7y ago
> but they always send me another one without caring. Had something like that happen to me, and for the product, it was a shock. I had ordered the item, it said it was delivered, but it never made it to me. I contact CS (via chat) and they said they would send out another one. I said ok - what happens if the old one shows up in the meantime. They told me to keep it. A few days later I got the original item (it had been shipped to a completely wrong address via USPS). Then a few weeks later I got the "new" one. So now I have two of them. The item? A Tamiya Grasshopper kit.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  They still make those??
JohnFen 7y ago
To be honest, I've never received a damaged book or CD from Amazon in those padded envelopes. I really prefer them over the boxes, because they seem less wasteful.

sp332 7y ago

> eBay is a much better experience Wouldn't this be down to the individual seller?

osamagirl69 7y ago
Yes, but ebay sellers have a reputation to maintain so sellers that stoop to amazon levels of idiocy when packing their products don't last long.
soupfordummies2 7y ago
Yes, but eBay sort of self-selects for better sellers and you can also see the seller's profile, feedback etc. Half the time on Amazon it's hard to even tell anything. As someone else said, books are REALLY bad. It's a gamble as to what you actually receive sometimes.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Amazon has basically turned itself into eBay but without a way to check the reputation of a seller.
  - sp332 7y ago
    Right under the "Buy it now" button, it says "sold by X and fulfilled by Amazon", or "ships from and sold by X". If you click on X it shows you seller feedback. It's an extra click compared to eBay and it's not ideal, but it's hardly impossible.
    - specialp 7y ago
      Yeah but that's the issue. On eBay the seller has their feedback rating displayed prominently. On Amazon it is sold by <insert English odd word combo> "company" that nobody pays attention to as the ratings are on the product, and it indicates that the product you will get doesn't depend on who sells it really. It is also fulfilled by Amazon so you know you will get it fast. So the consumer basically considers the seller as a wholesaler (which they essentially are in this arrangement, and don't care.

rbritton 7y ago

eBay has become my first stop for many categories of goods. It's not always the best choice, but it is often enough that it's worth checking. For example, both of my carbon monoxide detectors expired at the same time, and Amazon and local box stores wanted something like $70 each for replacements. On eBay I found the same model new in box for half of that from what I think was a fire system installation company.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
Sellers are fleeing eBay in droves because eBay and PayPal always side with the customer, even in blatantly fraudulent cases. More than half of the orders I've placed on eBay in the past year have been cancelled by eBay or PayPal because they detected fraud from the seller. I can't be bothered to keep wasting my time and money on a site that is hardly even a shadow of what it used to be. Amazon suffers the same,but slightly different problems. As such I've had no choice but to revert back to shopping in person, or in many cars simply skip out on purchasing things I could have readily found on eBay or Amazon five years ago for good prices without hassle. Somewhere eBay and Amazon have completely dropped the ball. I hope it effects their bottom line soon because the second hand stores near me are junk.

viburnum 7y ago

Me too. I bought a rare $80 art book from amazon and the first two were badly damaged from shipping and the third was just a little damaged so I gave up and took it. I was worried they would deactivate my account for being a troublemaker or something.

Apocryphon 7y ago

Ironically as well, I tend to use alternative sites to buy books. I prefer ThriftBooks and Powells for secondhand used books, and Barnes and Noble for new ones (of which I buy only on sale). What do people here use?

graywh 7y ago
I've been buying used copies of the paperbacks my kids need for school from discoverbooks.com they often have notes, highlighting, and dogears -- perfect for our use-case

tentboy 7y ago

Yep. Got a BluRay recently with a badly cracked case because it shipped in little more than a paper envelope, and im sure was chucked up my front steps from 10 feet away. I usually buy them from Best Buy's online site which always seems to have the same price as amazon now

AmVess 7y ago

I received two nvme ssd's in a padded envelope. They could easily have been destroyed. They delivered a $500 video card by slapping a shipping sticker on the product box and shipping it that way. On the other hand, I received a $12 box of wet wipes that came in a giant, nicely padded box. The product itself was in a sturdy box. $400 dollars worth of computer storage was shipped improperly, but Amazon made sure I got my box of wet wipes safe and sound! More often than not, I receive small items in giant boxes. Amazon used to ship one order in one box, now they ship one order in many boxes. I don't know how much waste Amazon generates with lazy packaging, but it must be a colossal amount.

dawnerd 7y ago
It's funny how they hide behind the "Frustration Free" packaging which ends up being pretty frustrating. I just ordered a Dymo printer and they slapped a sticker on the original box that ended up completely destroyed (and I had it delivered to a locker via amazons own delivery people).
cr0sh 7y ago
Regarding your video card, there wasn't an option to have it re-packed in an Amazon box? Usually for items that will ship with external facing identifiable product information, they will give you the option (a checkbox) to have it packed inside an Amazon box...
amznthrowaway4 7y ago
Your video card would be shipped in that fashion if the product was certified SIOC (Ships In Own Container); wherein the seller certifies that their packaging is adequate to ship to the customer with only cosmetic damage to the packaging. For SIOC products, I believe there's always an option to include an Amazon box _around_ the original box, however it's optional because that second box is considered to be waste, as the product packaging is already supposed to be good enough for shipping purposes.
m463 7y ago
I ordered two cr2032 cells, and received them in a huge box with a lithium battery sticker. I suspected the box was chosen so large because of the sticker size, not the product size (which was about 1"x2"x1/8")

Pxtl 7y ago

The other problem with those mailers is that they're not recyclable. They're plastic mixed with paper, meaning they're neither. Like, if you order a huge item from amazon, it will come in 2 feet of normal recyclable cardboard. But if you order books? They send them in those ridiculous mailers.

m463 7y ago

I recently bought a new book from amazon, and it was thrown in with the rest of my order, causing the pages to be folded over at an angle. sigh.