Are you a good packager?
You know, packing things up to put in the post like old toys that you've sold on Ebay and the like.
I take forever packaging, largely because I'm slow and I'm paranoid about stuff breaking in transit. Despite this I still have had some breakages over the years.
My technique is to use any boxes and inner material lying about the house: shoe boxes, bigger supermarket boxes, smaller boxes like tea, toothpaste and oxo for fillers and lots and lots of shredded newspaper and magazines. We have a small stock of bubble wrap as well for fragile stuff. I always finish with brown paper wrap and parcel tape.
Over the years I've had some right rubbish packages sent to me. Fragile carded blisters simply stuffed in a jiffy bag all the way from another country; items placed in a box with no inner material at all and items wrapped solely in brown paper and nothing else.
Still, some things are unpredictable. I recently sent a DVD to someone in a jiffy bag, which was all fine. What I didn't expect was the DVD to detach inside the case and slide around in transit getting scratched allover. That was unexpected when the buyer told me.
What's your packaging experience been like readers?
What irritates me is when people lovingly wrap in tons of bubblewrap and then secure it with sellotape! The amount of damage you can do to the contents trying to get the darned stuff off! It would be so much easier and safer if they used masking tape which comes off easily.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean Kev! The mega bubble wrap cellotape monster!
ReplyDeleteMy parcel horror story is the flip side of Kevin's coin, Woodsy. It was a vintage Action Man space capsule I'd won on ebay. The seller simply put it in an oversized card box and posted it without a hint of bubblewrap or protective inner packing. Judging by the damage, the vintage capsule's landing was more crashdown than splashdown. Yep, the disappointed seller was seemingly surprised that it had arrived damaged and that I'd opened a refund request. I was more annoyed that a decent vintage toy had been unnecessarily damaged.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean too Tone. After surviving years intact one single act of idiocy can ruin a vintage item in the post. I think some people's packing of the sold item is an afterthought which they put little effort or importance on. I dont get it.
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