Recently, I ordered custom designed stickers from Uline, the company that provides many of our boxes and packing materials. Normally our stickers are printed on recycled paper, however these weren't. I had to opt for a less expensive option. To compensate, we reduced the size of the stickers to between 1/2 and 1 inch. I was pretty happy when they arrived. They will save us time and money, and have a very small environmental footprint... or so I thought.
Here's the problem. Uline did a ridiculously excessive packaging job shipping me these stickers. I had to show you...
The stickers were printed on rolls of 500. My 3,000 stickers created this stack less than 6 inches high and 3 inches in diameter.
Each sticker set came in a box made of paper. So far, so good. Each box contained a plastic baggy with two rolls. I don't like plastic, but we are still relatively Earth friendly.
Lastly, the three boxes were shipped on the same day from the same place by UPS separately. And each had several exterior stickers.
I bought 3,000 tiny stickers.
Here's what I got:
- 6 rolls of stickers
- 3 plastic baggies
- 3 paperboard boxes
- 3 cardboard boxes
- 6 sheets of office paper
- 450+ full color glossy catalog pages
- 3 medium size cardboard boxes
- 12+ packing or labeling stickers
I also paid for 3x the packing labor, 3x transportation fuel, and 3x delivery labor.
Ok, I'm a little company who sells a little tea. Imagine this multiplied by 100,000 little companies that probably shop at Uline yearly.
I urge you to buy products from companies who think about the environment, and when you can, avoid those who abuse your Earth and your wallet.
Wow.. I have never bought anything from Uline, but had considered doing so. Now I never will. Thanks for the post!
ReplyDeleteUline (AKA Schlitz Brewing Co) obviously doesn't care how much its customers pay for shipping or about the environment. This is what happens when a company is supported by beer money. Maybe they should go back to making beer.
ReplyDeleteI buy quite a bit from Uline. Most of their items are shipped in bulk with little or no packaging, but obviously custom stickers are shipped differently. While I think it's important to point fingers occasionally, I think the lesson here isn't about buying or not buying from Uline, it's about giving feedback to companies in general to encourage them to fix wasteful practices.
ReplyDeleteJason, is Uline so clueless they need feedback on how to ship products without wasting? If my memory serves me right, Uline specializes in packaging, so you would think they would know something about it.
ReplyDeleteI guess that's what you get from a $1 billion company that took the money from their beer business and dumped it into the packaging business.
I just got a pleasant telephone call from Jackie at Uline. They saw the blog post. I think their first reaction was to try to make me a happy customer again. I assured them, I'm still happy customer. I just pointed out an anomaly.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a good call because she wasn't defensive. I got a sense of genuine interest in the feedback. She didn't apologize for the packing materials, however she did say that it concerned her that I received three shipments on three separate orders from the same day in the same department.
They are a big company, and there is always room for improvement.
She also offered to flag my account so I won't receive the catalog in my shipments. I've received new catalogs twice a year as they are updated, but I won't receive several per month including my orders. It's not a perfect solution, but it certainly helps.
Again, my goal isn't to publicly drag one of my vendors through the mud. It's simply to draw attention to wasteful practices in shipping and receiving. If everyone who owned the company looked over their processes and made slight improvements the amount of money, time, materials and energy wasted could be huge.
I invited Uline to post a comment. Comments are moderated, but I do post reactions good or bad, as long as they are reasonably intelligent.
If you're interested in following this post, you can subscribe by e-mail or check back.
I wonder why they didn't offer to reimburse you for the additional shipping on the three separate packages?
ReplyDeleteI wasn't charged triple shipping. They probably lost money there.
ReplyDelete