Aha! Why don’t they open for you as soon as you’ve paid for it?
Have you asked them to open it for you? I’m sure they have those new-fangled “scissors” devices that are all the rage.
(In my pharmacy, the products that spring immediately to mind that are in these antitheft packages are “male enhancement” pills, vibrating rings for sexual use, and anti-herpes ointments. I’d open them for a paying customer who asked, but I don’t think they’d appreciate me just assuming they wanted it torn open right there in front of everyone.)
It would slow up the checkout line, or require extra employees to be “clamshell removers” (“shuckers”?), like grocery stores sometimes have an extra employee bagging at the checkout.
Even more reason to start a movement for all consumers to demand this service. If the expense and inconvenience is put back on the retailer, they will demand a solution from the manufacturer.
The Great ‘We Can’t Be Bothered to Use Scissors’ Movement of 2009.
Join together to break the clamshells apart.
youre missing the point here, people might be cutting themselves on their own cutting tools but the packaging itself is more than capable of seriously injuring you, hell I would bet you could slit someones throat with that packaging…I wonder if they allow it on airplanes
Costs are costs, regardless of how trivially you want to describe them.
What we have here are companies imposing costs (ostensibly the costs of preventing theft) on consumers, and consumers are resenting that imposed cost and demanding an alternative. Seems like a healthy demonstration of a functioning free market to me.
Are you saying we should all just suck it up and pay for infuriating garbage that we don’t want? Any particular reason? “It’s not that big a deal” isn’t a good reason, because big or small, it’s still a ‘deal’ that needs to be dealt with.
It doesn’t seem to be a problem for clothing retailers in the mall, who probably remove thousands of those magnetic-ink widgets from pants and sweaters every day.
To be clear, I don’t believe that clamshell packaging is anti-theft in any way except incidentally. There are hundreds of more reasonable anti-theft devices, just go to JC Penny’s and look at what they use. I think clamshells are a cheap, easy packaging solution for manufacturers who don’t care one whit how problematic it is for me, when by the time it is my problem they’ve already got my money.
Most mall clothing retailers don’t push customers through at the rate of some other retail operations, and usually don’t have long checkout lines to begin with. I hate to think of what happens to already lengthy lines at Fry’s Electronics or big-box stores like Target if they have to add clamshell removal to the process.
I use a four inch knife, and haven’t had occasion to regret it.
While I am sympathetic about the shoplifting problem (I’ve worked retail, and know first hand how easily merchandise can walk out the door), I don’t think that clamshells are a good answer for the consumer. I do have scissors, can openers, single edged razors, and that ceramic blade thingy, and none of them are really satisfactory solutions for me. In all cases, it takes me quite a few minutes to open the damn package, and I always have sharp plastic edges that threaten to cut my hands.
Manufacturers and retailers are going to have to realize that a clamshell package might mean the difference between a legit customer buying or not buying a product. When they put an item in a clamshell, I might pass it up because it’s going to cost me my time and aggravation, and if I don’t really need it, I’m likely to pass it up. If I only want it, as opposed to needing it, I’m VERY likely to pass it up.
Oh, and I did try a regular can opener last time I needed to open a clamshell. Didn’t work. I had to resort to a single edge razor in some spots, and scissors in another spot, before I finally was able to extract the medical thermometer from its clamshell.
Note to self: Come back to this thread in two years. See if** lizardling **is still unscathed.
Well it how has a Wikipedia entry: Wrap Rage.
Let’s look at the history.
Retailers apparently saw an alarming increase in shrinkage due to small and valuable items disappearing. They appealed to manufacturers to make their packages so difficult to open that only the most determined thief would make the attempt.
This seems to have been successful, judging by the near-ubiquity of these packages, especially in electronics.
Some people are complaining that these packages are too successful, making them difficult to open even at home.
What comes next?
Well, communication between retailers and manufacturers is direct. A threat not to stock an item is definitive.
Communication between retailers and customers is diffuse. Few people bother to tell retailers why they are not buying products. A move to the internet to purchase more easily-opened packages is swamped by the continuing trend to move all purchases to the internet because of convenience and choice. Consumers almost never successfully boycott any product or industry for any reason.
How do you as an individual demonstrate that retailers will be losing more money by their packaging than by shoplifting? I have no idea, even if it were true, which I doubt. Can you convince retailers to invest in a new form of anti-theft devices when somebody else now shoulders the burdens of paying for this? Not likely. Have any of you done anything at all about this other than bitch on the internet? You tell me.
'm not against any of this. I’d like to see less packaging myself. Maybe in X number of years new anti-theft devices will be adopted for other reasons and make this all moot. In the meantime, you’re bucking hard economic logic. If anybody has a idea beyond “consumers should band together” put it out there.
And even if you DO find a good way to open them easily, you still have mangled packaging that the store can’t restock.
You Honor, may I bring your attention to Coyote vs. Acme?
Ok. You’ve made your point. Court rules in favor of plaintiff. Sue on, America!
Personally I’ve found that using a razor/box cutter works the best. Cut around three sides of item, using only enough force to cut through one layer of plastic, not all the way through. Then fold flap back to remove item.
IME you get cut when you just cut one side and try to rip it open or reach in and try to extract it instead of cutting three sides.
If scissors worked, that would be one thing. But the lips on some of these (“Clams got lips!”) are too thick even for my poultry shears, and I’ve cut myself on the shell when the blades suddenly skewed apart.
I say “It’s not that big a deal” is a great reason, because if I got all worked up over every little thing as minor as that, all I’d ever be is pissed off and miserable. I spent too many years reacting to stuff that I later realized simply wasn’t worth my time at all. If you think about and get all angry over it and post angry missives about it, guess what? You’re wasting even more time on blister packaging, and the odds are pretty damn close to 100% that you could spend the rest of your life crying about it and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
The packages annoy me, too, but I doubt I’d go to the level of describing them as “infuriating,” as I already have several pairs of scissors, and I’m pretty sure most other people do, too, so it’s not like I’m incurring any extra expense here.
Use the part of the scissors closest to your hand instead of the tips or the middles of the scissors to cut the edges of the packaging. I know the packages that you’re talking about with the fat lips, but I have yet to meet one that regular scissors can’t tame.