For example, they show a Fisher-Price toy in a fragile store display box that comes from them in a plain brown shipping box.
"What’s the difference between Frustration-Free Packaging and traditional packaging?
The Frustration-Free Package (on the left) is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It’s designed to be opened without the use of a box cutter or knife and will protect your product just as well as traditional packaging (on the right). Products with Frustration-Free Packaging can frequently be shipped in their own boxes, without an additional shipping box."
That’s been around for a while and I’m really glad they’ve undertaken the initiative, but I’ve yet to see it used in any product I’ve received over the last few months. Clamshells, especially, are still the hell they always were.
Incidentally, a few months before they first announced frustration-free packaging, I wrote them with a complaint about excessive use of packaging: They’d send me tiny items in huge boxes (I’m talking easily 5x-6x larger than it had to be) overstuffed with airbags and also shipping the items in my order separately, though they were subject to the same two-day shipping and all arrived on the same day as a giant stack. They actually seemed to do something about it (or maybe it was just a coincidence), but I noticed a clear decrease of waste for my next few orders… then it slowly ramped back up. Too bad
I popped in with the same vent about Amazon’s packaging policies. I once ordered a package of earbud covers. Something that could easily fit into a smallish padded mailer, and would be at absolutely ZERO risk of damage even if stuffed into a generic regular envelope and rolled up.
It came in a box. I think they at least skipped the step of shrink-wrapping it to a piece of cardboard inside the box, or adding inflated protection, but still. The box was many, many times the size of the contents. :rolleyes:
Most recently we ordered a calculator my son needed for his math class. The calculator sure wasn’t frustration free - practically required a blowtorch to get the thing out of it. At least in that case, the outer package was more in line with the contents.
The new packaging initiative looks intriguing. Pity they’ve got such a crappy selection so far though.
