Tales of Stupid Shipping*

My parents recently ordered small bottles of touch-up paint for their Westinghouse range, a company which is now owned by Electrolux.

They ordered three small bottles (0.6 oz. each), but the company sent them four.

Here is a photo of the small bottles of paint, with a quarter for comparison size:



Here are the boxes they were shipped in, with the bottles of paint in front for comparison. One box contained two bottles, the remaining boxes contained one bottle each:



And HERE on the right is the box that those three individual smaller boxes were packed in:



Also in these boxes were several yards worth of blank newsprint used for packing materials.

This was the most insane use of overpackaging I've seen in a very long time. Here's all four bottles packed together in one of the individual baggies (which held only one bottle). They could have easily put these into a FedEx padded envelope and had them arrive safely:



I suppose there is some truth to what my Dad said after opening all the boxes: "Well, at least a box this size wouldn't get lost. And I'll save the big box to ship something else."

* The title of this post comes from the blog The Consumerist, which has a regular feature called "Stupid Shipping Gang".