How Not to Ship Stuff

I live in a rural area, about half-way between Kalispell and Missoula, Montana. Although I go to one or the other of those "big cities" a couple of times each  month, neither offers much in the way of retail photographic stores, and nothing at all that caters to large-format printing needs. I've no choice but to order paper, ink, and other supplies via the Web. Doing that, of course, means the products are shipped to my door. That brings the risk of receiving damaged goods, and that is becoming a too-frequent occurrence.

This is due in part to the brutal handing of packages by the good folk at UPS and FedEx. Unfortunately, the product vendors do nothing to help insure safe delivery. An example:

A few days ago I ordered, from Atlex, a 25-sheet box of EEF, 17 x 22 inches (US C). This arrived Friday while I was away.

At left is what I found this on the front porch. You can't see it in this photo, but the tape on the "top" of the carton, the side against the house, was completely broken open. The top of the carton was held closed by the adhesive-backed plastic sleeve holding the packing slip. The bottom of the carton was pushed half-way into the box's interior. Expecting the worst, I photographed the carton before opening it.

Inside I found only the box of EEF. No packing material. None. No styrofoam peanuts. No bubble-wrap or air pillows. No crumpled craft paper. The Epson box is about two inches (5 cm) narrower than the shipping carton. The Epson box is a little over one inch (2.5 cm) thick, while the shipping carton is six inches (15 cm) deep. Plenty of room for the Epson box to bash around inside the larger carton, which it apparently did with abandon. You can see here the edges of the EEF box are scuffed. These boxes are taped on two edges. One of those tape seals had broken.

When I opened the Epson box I found the inner supports, designed to cushion the pack of paper and keep it centered in the box, were smashed flat. The pack of paper had slipped over-top of the support on one side of the box. Nothing good could come from that.

This picture shows the paper pack and its cardboard cover pushed against the right-hand side of the box, and shows the crushed support on the left. The support on the right, under the paper pack, was similarly flattened.

I opened the black plastic sleeve holding the paper and removed the top sheet. I found one deep and one shallow crease in the paper. This doesn't show well in the photo. Clearly this is unusable. I didn't pull any additional sheets from the pack. I returned that to the sleeve and closed the box.

Time to call Atlex.

  --Jay

Update: I had a two-minute conversation with Matt at Atlex. Replacement paper will ship today. A return label for the damaged shipment will be sent via email. I feel like I've spun the roulette wheel—no idea if the replacement will be any better than the first shipment. Time will tell.