I got a video card that had almost no packaging inside the box. Just few pieces of newspaper and the video card was able to move freely inside the box banging against the walls. That wasn't even the worst of it because one end of the box had opened during shipment, so I was surprised there was still something inside the box when it arrived. If the box had been put wrong side down even once during shipment the card would have just fallen out of the box.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote:

I always think the problem is looking well packaged as opposed to being well packaged. Luckily I've never had anything trashed, but it sometimes amazes me how - I've had numerous video cards with prominent large passive coolers sent in nothing but a flimsy padded envelope, arrive without a scratch whilst I've had full systems sent in multiple layers of heavy duty bubble wrap and outer cardboard packing case arrive with case dents and damaged front panels (the screw / spacing pillars on these seem particularly vulnerable). Generally its about material choice and separation of the layers, but many sellers seem to go out of their way to cheap out when packaging.

As an eBay buyer, I completely agree with your.. sellers go out of their way to cheap out when packaging.

As an eBay seller I go out of my way to package up everything really well. Out of hundreds of sales, I have never had anything get damaged in shipping.

I'm the same as you when I'm packaging goods - bizarrely a skill I learnt from my late father who spent his life in an industry where fragile items were regularly hand packed for dispatch (we're talking old school here - padding, corrugated card, box, brown paper and string on all sides and finished in a carry handle 😲 😀 )

285 GTX GPU (thick card) shipped in an unpadded, cardboard paper envelope.

I bought a mint condition copy of Shadows of the Empire, and the seller stuffed it in a cornflakes box and shipped it that way. Of course I received crushed and worthless, at least the CD worked.

RoyBatty wrote:

I bought a mint condition copy of Shadows of the Empire, and the seller stuffed it in a cornflakes box and shipped it that way. Of course I received crushed and worthless, at least the CD worked.

That didn't come from the UK by any chance? I ordered Star Trek: Voyager from a UK seller who sent it to me in a cereal box. It arrived undamaged though thankfully. Sucks to hear that yours was crushed.

I ordered a VLB video card from a European seller and it arrived wrapped in a thin layer of bubble wrap packed in a paper envelope. No physical damage, but the card is very dead.

Worst offender I had was a 486 CPU, in a small plastic bag, a bunch of duct tape around it, an adress label slapped onto it and shipped.

That's it. No antistatic, no box, not even bubble wrap.

It actually worked after I had to straighten every pin on it enough to push it into a LIF socket.. After 3-4 insertions it mostly got back in shape.

But I still think back on it and can't figure out why someone would think that is acceptable packaging.

21603 wrote:

RoyBatty wrote:

I bought a mint condition copy of Shadows of the Empire, and the seller stuffed it in a cornflakes box and shipped it that way. Of course I received crushed and worthless, at least the CD worked.

That didn't come from the UK by any chance? I ordered Star Trek: Voyager from a UK seller who sent it to me in a cereal box. It arrived undamaged though thankfully. Sucks to hear that yours was crushed.

I ordered a VLB video card from a European seller and it arrived wrapped in a thin layer of bubble wrap packed in a paper envelope. No physical damage, but the card is very dead.

Nope it was a seller in USA, he was an older gentleman and gave me some bull story about how he always did that and never had an issue, I told him that is totally unacceptable (and I had even asked him to package it well, respectfully as I always do). I wish you could blacklist buyers/sellers on ebay like you can on other services.

I got an AT tower computer (486) off Mercari a few months ago.. it was packed very loosely. It bounced around inside the case a lot and broke all the pegs off the front face of the case. I had to epoxy them all back on. Luckily I was able to fix it so I could screw the face plate back on.

Another one is people who wrap motherboards or other circuit cards in static cling wrap surrounded by foam packing peanuts. I've had several DOA boards from people using that method.

Yet another I see a lot is bubble mailers being used for fragile things, or stuff that shouldn't bend. I've received a few cracked circuit boards, and bent up big-box PC games.

Lastly, I have had people ship LGA socket motherboards without the socket protector, and when it arrives it looks like Mount St. Helens blew down all the trees (pins). Then the seller claims you must have damaged it. That's probably the worst one. I'm very hesitant to buy LGA boards unless they are brand new in a sealed retail box. I can't stand making damage claims, because the sellers usually lie up and down and make you go through weeks/months of trouble to get your money back.

Today I got a 12 pound laptop, 1997 plastic laptop, wrapped in just bubblewrap - nothing else. I'm amazed, the screen looks like it's still in one piece but the battery connector inside the laptop has been knocked off and the plastics on the underside, around the fan area, are all broken and will need repair / replacing. This is the really annoying thing about buying old but perceived low value old computers, people think it's okay to just pack them in nothing because the value is low; but I paid £13 for postage and £12 for the item itself, so that's not right.
That's going to be fun to repair 🙁

Last week's thing was an HP Vectra VL 400 motherboard, the only board that connects to this ISA expansion board I got - the seller again, just packaged it to go all across Europe in just bubblewrap. It arrived with two corners bashed upwards and won't boot in many conditions (including with the ISA expansion board). So that's now pretty much useless for my purposes.

wiretap wrote:

...people who wrap motherboards or other circuit cards in static cling wrap surrounded by foam packing peanuts. I've had several DOA boards from people using that method.

This annoys me often, too.
Especially when people are so "thoughtful" to additionally wrap the boards into multiple layers of bubble foil. Every layer adds static charge when plastics surfaces get separated while unwrapping.
Had a lot of DOA this way, and I am so fed up with this that I am going to always give negative feedback if not packed antistatically.

I guess if I buy something really rare+valuable and it gets delivered this way, the only relatively safe way to unpack is to submerge in water and wait until water displaced the air inside, then unwrap.

Other annoying experiences:
I once ordered some HDDs and a monitor (like those @Gered showed).
I got a parcel, without any padding. On the bottom there were the bare HDDs, and the heavy monitor sitting on them.
Maybe it was because the HDDs were IBM server drives, they still worked. But I guess it was just luck.

Once I ordered a bunch of power supplies. These were packed into a larger cardbox, with much space in it. No filling materials. PSUs got thrown like dices, arrived mostly dead. With most you were hearing the loose parts inside them when shaking them.

But it also depends on the shipping company.
For example, in Germany "Hermes" is one of these major cheapo shippers, almost exclusively used by non-corporate senders.
The fact that many of the parcels from Hermes show signs of rough handling should have warned me.
But I once had a stupid day and used that "Hermes" services to ship a Commodore 1084 monitor. Guess what happened? Although I had two inches of styrofoam and filler to all sides of the parcel, the monitor arrived with broken front plate and circuit board. I never had such when using "DHL", the German equivalent to Fedex.
I instantly refunded the buyer and filed a complaint with Hermes. The Hermes representative laconically told me, that he thinks the monitor fell from a conveyor belt, which can be several meters. After several attempts to get the monitor price and shipping costs reimbursed I gave up, because Hermes every time told me, that they threw away the communication,
Since this experience I use Hermes only if shipping heavy stuff with little value.

I bought a Dell 2001FP from a seller on amazon, and they wrapped it in that thick green static wrap... they sent me a replacement panel and did the same thing. It was DOA. What is wrong with these people.

retardware wrote:

wiretap wrote:

...people who wrap motherboards or other circuit cards in static cling wrap surrounded by foam packing peanuts. I've had several DOA boards from people using that method.

This annoys me often, too.
Especially when people are so "thoughtful" to additionally wrap the boards into multiple layers of bubble foil. Every layer adds static charge when plastics surfaces get separated while unwrapping.

I usually just use an X-Acto knife (very sharp modeller's knife) to cut through the bubble wrap. Also saves on struggling with excessive amounts of tape holding everything together...

So I think we've all had about the same experiences with packaging. Man I cringe to see cling wrap and peanuts. I'm always relieved when there's at least a wrap of anti-static bags around the item. But... the thing I'm starting to learn is: Be careful ordering from the south-east states of the US. It seems everyone down there stores vintage stuff in a locker-room adjacent to a sauna, padded with old socks. Even just removing the motherboard from a box is enough to make my lungs hurt from the funk.

That cling wrap is happening way too often in Germany too. Polystyrene is another traditional packaging material for things like CPUs and memory chips.
The weirdest packaging was an 8bit computer (don't remember what it was, but it was something bigger and relatively valuable) that arrived wrapped in an old skirt.

The beautiful and rare big box copy of Stunts 4D Racing I found after years of looking arrived with decent padding, but the seller had taped the bubble wrap directly to game box! 40 mins of very careful tape removal later and no real damage was done, but my faith in humanity was shaken.

Okay?
A small lot of NES games before the classic gaming price gouging spike of the mid-2000s came in diapers.

What?
PCI Sound Blaster card came in a bubble mailer envelope, no box. Thankfully, no damage.

God of Luck
A few dozen Nintendo Power magazines arrived during a severe thunderstorm. The box was placed not on my covered front porch, and not by my side door which was protected by the roof overhang, but under the downspout with water pouring over it. I rushed it into the house to find that the seller had almost completely sealed the box in packing tape, and inside of this box was a cube wrapped in plastic wrap, under which was more tape, and under this was bubble wrap. The magazines were undamaged, thanks to the seller's outstanding packing job.

retardware wrote:

This annoys me often, too. Especially when people are so "thoughtful" to additionally wrap the boards into multiple layers of bu […]
Show full quote

wiretap wrote:

...people who wrap motherboards or other circuit cards in static cling wrap surrounded by foam packing peanuts. I've had several DOA boards from people using that method.

This annoys me often, too.
Especially when people are so "thoughtful" to additionally wrap the boards into multiple layers of bubble foil. Every layer adds static charge when plastics surfaces get separated while unwrapping.
Had a lot of DOA this way, and I am so fed up with this that I am going to always give negative feedback if not packed antistatically.

I guess if I buy something really rare+valuable and it gets delivered this way, the only relatively safe way to unpack is to submerge in water and wait until water displaced the air inside, then unwrap.

Other annoying experiences:
I once ordered some HDDs and a monitor (like those @Gered showed).
I got a parcel, without any padding. On the bottom there were the bare HDDs, and the heavy monitor sitting on them.
Maybe it was because the HDDs were IBM server drives, they still worked. But I guess it was just luck.

Once I ordered a bunch of power supplies. These were packed into a larger cardbox, with much space in it. No filling materials. PSUs got thrown like dices, arrived mostly dead. With most you were hearing the loose parts inside them when shaking them.

But it also depends on the shipping company.
For example, in Germany "Hermes" is one of these major cheapo shippers, almost exclusively used by non-corporate senders.
The fact that many of the parcels from Hermes show signs of rough handling should have warned me.
But I once had a stupid day and used that "Hermes" services to ship a Commodore 1084 monitor. Guess what happened? Although I had two inches of styrofoam and filler to all sides of the parcel, the monitor arrived with broken front plate and circuit board. I never had such when using "DHL", the German equivalent to Fedex.
I instantly refunded the buyer and filed a complaint with Hermes. The Hermes representative laconically told me, that he thinks the monitor fell from a conveyor belt, which can be several meters. After several attempts to get the monitor price and shipping costs reimbursed I gave up, because Hermes every time told me, that they threw away the communication,
Since this experience I use Hermes only if shipping heavy stuff with little value.

I have had many DOA socket 7 boards from that method of packaging. got angry at those sellers and left negative feedback.

GeForce FX 5600
I received this GPU in just a plain manila envelope. Its fan was damaged, so the seller gave me a partial refund.

I could order the correct replacement fan, but that would cost more than what I paid for the GPU, so, with tape, pop bottle plastic and some cable ties, I'm just using a different fan that doesn't quite fit the heatsink.

I received a nice 286 Plasma Portable with a MFM-drive.
Kept all the pieces after getting a refund. Maybe, one day and much much glue later, i'll have the case repaired.
Machine still working though, also, the built-in MFM controller and harddisk is kinda rare.
I just love this amber plasma panels!