Hi, folks.

The rest of this email is simply my chance to vent about a peeve of mine
with an extreme example of the kind of wasteful overkill that seems to be
taking hold of so many technology companies, but from my perspective
especially HP.  Feel free to delete this message now if you don't want to
visit the Land of the Ridiculous.

On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Harry Weide <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
|Is anybody else out there as appalled as I am at the overpackaging
|of the HP LaserROM? I just got mine today. The shipment consisted
|of:

[snipped a list comprised almost entirely of excessive packaging]

|I'd be perfectly happy to just get the LaserROM in its cardboard
|sleeve inside a padded envelope (and maybe we can dispense with
|the padding) with an address label on it.

This is one of the things I have found to be so much a useless overkill
that it has passed well into the Land of the Ridiculous.  My favorite
Ridiculous Package from HP is virtually a shrine in my office.  It
consists of:

1 - 9.5x11x1" (inside dimensions) shipping box [P/N 5958-7357]

Outside it:
1 - 4.5x8" self-adhesive shipping label (with UPS shipping info)
1 - 5.5x10" self-adhesive plastic packing list envelope
1 - 8.5x11" packing list showing listing only "MFCOBOL/iX RECOVERY KIT"

Inside it:
approx. 2 square yds of crudely folded butcher paper (apparently to
                  protect the contents from damage during shipping)
2 - 8.5x11" sheets of paper

The first of the pages contains a letter personally addressed to me which
indicates that the box (5008-53382) contains "software product updates" for
32561A-420 ("MPE/XL for use on HP 3000 Seri" [SIC]) in HP Kit Number
5965-4382 ("MFCOBOL/iX RECOVERY KIT").

The second page (with the number 5965-4382 at the bottom) says:
>Dear Valued HP3000 Customer,
>
>You recently received your MPE/iX Release 5.5 software and documentation
>update.  It has been brought to our attention that you also incorrectly
>received software and documentation for the HP Micro Focus /iX product.
>
>Hewlett-Packard Company appologizes [SIC] for any inconvenience and
>confusion this may have caused you.
>
>If you are interested in purchasing a license to use this product,
>please contact your HP Sales Representitive or your Authorized HP
>Reseller; otherwise you can discard this product.
>
>Hewlett-Packard Co. is committed to providing it's [SIC] customers with
>the highest quality products and we sincerely apologize for this error.
>A preventative/corrective action has been initiated to insure this type
>of error does not occur again in the future.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Hewlett-Packard Co.

So (at last) we discover the point to all this waste paper:  to tell me to
ignore the 3 extra boxes of MFCOBOL stuff (each shipped separately) that
came in addition to my 5.5 update.  I had already decided that I wasn't too
interested in MFCOBOL and had long since dispatched the prior to recycler
heaven.  (The DDS tapes of course went into my scratch tape pile.)

I never will understand why this letter wasn't simply stuffed into an
envelope (or even better, tri-folded and stapled) and mailed.  I shudder to
think what HP spent (packaging and shipping UPS) trying to fix the original
problem when a single piece of paper and 32 cents (or less) postage would
have been at least as expedient.
--
Jeff Woods
[log in to unmask] at Unison Software
[log in to unmask]   at home  [PGP key available here via finger]

"Truth is so rare it's delightful to tell it."  --  Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)