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.