Tag: damaged goods

Posted in Travel

I’m crushed

Posted on by William Douthwaite

I chuckled when the eBay buyer sent me these pictures yesterday along with the comment, “Should have been packaged better.”

First of all, what did the United States Postal Service put this box through on it’s journey from my town to California? How many heavy boxes would have been stacked on top of this one to crush it like this?

I’ll bet you’re wondering what was inside this box. It was a large ceramic plate for tortilla chips, with a smaller dish for salsa. I wrapped each in three layers of bubble wrap. After placing it in the box, I stuffed more bubble wrap around the sides to keep it from shifting around. I was certain that it would have a nice, comfy ride from my home to theirs.

However, I had no idea that someone would run over it with a forklift. Or close it in the cargo door of the plane. Or stand on it to reach something up on a shelf. Or sit on it for lunch break.

As bad as the box looks, the contents were intact. Well, almost. The small dish had a piece broken off an edge. The larger plate survived the trip with no damage. I would call that a pretty good packing job. Actually, looking at the pictures again, I would call it a miracle.

What could I have done differently? I suppose I could have put the box inside a box, cushioned with a million styrofoam packing peanuts. Do they even sell those any more?

The buyer had paid $25 to ship a $10 tray. I refunded his money. A couple of drops of superglue and he’ll be munching chips and salsa and throwing back margaritas for Cinco de Mayo in no time.

Posted in Life

Acceptable condition

Posted on by William Douthwaite

As the delivery truck pulled away, the alert sounded and a yellow Echo circle announced one new notification. A package has arrived.

When I opened the front door, a thick FedEx envelope fell across the threshold. A familiar sight, yet today very different. The envelope was wrapped in yards of packing tape. Beneath the tape I saw the envelope was ripped, torn, trampled, and water-stained.

But the package was not for me. My wife opened it when she returned home. Although she had purchased a used book, she did not expect to find it this used. The pages were wet, puckered, and compressed into a pulpy mess. When she showed it to me, I observed, “It looks like someone ran over it with a truck!”

So what happened? At what point did someone drive across the package, mummy it up with tape and send it on its way? I came up with a few scenarios.

Maybe the sender had set it on top of their car when heading off to the shipping place. As they pulled out of their driveway, they caught a glimpse of it in the mirror as it slid off the roof. They felt the bump as they drove over it. “Oh no!” “Well, we listed it in ‘acceptable condition. Don’t worry about it.”

Or maybe a huge pile of outgoing FedEx packages at the QuickShip place slipped off as the driver loaded up the hand truck on a rainy afternoon. No one noticed it until he felt the bump under the wheel. Glancing back, he saw the package on the asphalt. He jumped out, tossed it back into the truck, and drove off.

The book looked bad enough that it may have laid out in someone’s yard through a thunderstorm before they noticed it. Waterlogged and soggy, someone may have warned, “You can’t send it like that.” “You’re right.” So they microwaved it to dry it out a little, spun some wide tape around it, and sent it off.

It could be that someone else had purchased this book and it arrived in this condition at their house. They couldn’t return it. But they could resell it. Hey, if you don’t like it, just resell it. Buyer beware, right?