To reduce shipping damages, a Dutch bike company printed a television on their boxes

[Guest]

Original Article from the Verge: To reduce shipping damages, a Dutch bike company printed a television on their boxes

 

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Dutch bicycle manufacturer VanMoof found that it had a problem. As it shipped its products to customers, it found that they were arriving to customers damaged. The company came up with a genius solution: print a graphic of a flatscreen television on the side of the box

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By making its shippers think that they were transporting flatscreen televisions, the company found instantaneous results: "shipping damage to our bikes dropped by 70-80 percenet" said Rad. As Cycling Weekly pointed out, nobody wants to damage a new television, and few people equate an expensive bike with electronics.

Image copyright due to Jason Gray - hopefully this is fair use

 

I just thought this was really cool and a practical solution - maybe the way to prevent damage is to make people think they are carrying a big TV.  It's not like the weight will tell them any different.

Edited September 25, 2016 by VPrime

[PRTI]

Very smart move

[PLME888]

Thinking outside of the box pays of apparently. 

[mcraftax]

Brilliant 

[Tech_Dreamer]

[Syntaxvgm]

I wanna bet someone stole one of these boxes, found a bike inside and still is confused about it. 

[minibois]

Clever. Neat.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Or fire the shipping company's employees

[minibois]

10 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Or fire the shipping company's employees

They likely don't ship it themselves and rather employ/pay a DHL/FedEx/UPS like company to ship these. Can't fire employees who you are not the employer of  

[iamdarkyoshi]

1 minute ago, Minibois said:

They likely don't ship it themselves and rather employ/pay a DHL/FedEx/UPS like company to ship these. Can't fire employees who you are not the employer of  

I meant I think the shipping company should fire employees that don't give a flying fuck for other people's stuff

[imreloadin]

7 minutes ago, Minibois said:

They likely don't ship it themselves and rather employ/pay a DHL/FedEx/UPS like company to ship these. Can't fire employees who you are not the employer of  

Well you can fire them by using a different delivery company and spending your money elsewhere.

[SageOfSpice]

Funnily enough, I think most generic bikes weigh more than modern TVs. 

At least, here they seem to.

[minibois]

15 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I meant I think the shipping company should fire employees that don't give a flying fuck for other people's stuff

It's likely hard to find out where the 'damager' is since the package goes through so many stages. With something like a bike, made of so many fragile thing materials (like plastics) it can also get damaged by a bump or whatever easily too, you will only find out it is damaged once the customer opens the package up and sees the components.

10 minutes ago, imreloadin said:

Well you can fire them by using a different delivery company and spending your money elsewhere.

Because the Netherlands is such a small company, there are not that many postal companies. The majority of the market is held by one company (PostNL, at 70%) so they are usually the safest bet at sending packages (most manpower, etc.). However, if you send a lot of packages, it is bound to go wrong sometimes. Apparently enough times to print this image on the boxes, but not enough to switch to DHL, UPS or a couple of the other postal services.

[NumLock21]

Well that printed tv on the box didn't work cause in that pic, there are holes and the bike wheel is sticking out of the box. 

[Briggsy]

Or they can just replace those people with robots, like every other industry. Each box should say on it "Warning! Robots will replace you if you damage this package." Then in fine print at the bottom "robots will be taking your job anyway. just stop breaking our sh*t!"

[Dabombinable]

Still, it will make fuck all difference if UPS is involved in any way.

[zMeul]

9 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

I wanna bet someone stole one of these boxes, found a bike inside and still is confused about it. 

there is a joke here in .ro

one of our bike factories also used to make machine guns for the army

some dude who worked at the factory store parts to build a bike but every time he assembled it it still came out as a machine gun

[gamerking]

10 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I meant I think the shipping company should fire employees that don't give a flying fuck for other people's stuff

you got a better chance of finding a gold ingot in front of your house then the shippers removing the people  trying to break shit . i know i tried

[Maslofski]

too bad a pgu sized box with a tv on it wont get this kind of treatment

[laminutederire]

12 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I meant I think the shipping company should fire employees that don't give a flying fuck for other people's stuff

The main issue is that if they do it, they'll just end up replacing them with people giving even less fuck 99% of the time. They just need to put people to jail. That's called vandalism or destruction of private property. You put them in jail for that and maybe they'll stop doing it.

I heard some shipping companies employees even play football with what they're supposed to deliver because they're "bored".

Oh and they should start to pay truck drivers sometimes. I know a few who had to spend 6 years in court just to get their last 6 months of pay... with a mentality like shit like that,  that's not a surprise people feel like doing whatever they want. 

[Murasaki]

I bet my ass they use DHL. Worst company.

[Deli]

16 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Or fire the shipping company's employees

From the shipping company collecting the item to the point the customer receiving it. The item goes through many delivery centers, and many pairs of hands. It would be hard to pin point exactly who breaks the item during the transition.

[byalexandr]

15 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I meant I think the shipping company should fire employees that don't give a flying fuck for other people's stuff

Come on. It's not like they purposely try to harass your package. They have a lot of items to move throughout the country, and babying every single box wastes time and is nearly impossible anyway since they have to load it onto trucks or planes or whatever often from far distances.

[Bsmith]

welcome to the Netherlands everyone.

[Deli]

4 hours ago, laminutederire said:

The main issue is that if they do it, they'll just end up replacing them with people giving even less fuck 99% of the time. They just need to put people to jail. That's called vandalism or destruction of private property. You put them in jail for that and maybe they'll stop doing it.

I heard some shipping companies employees even play football with what they're supposed to deliver because they're "bored".

Oh and they should start to pay truck drivers sometimes. I know a few who had to spend 6 years in court just to get their last 6 months of pay... with a mentality like shit like that,  that's not a surprise people feel like doing whatever they want. 

Don't know how things work in the US.

 

In the Netherlands and Germany, because of the EU regulations and in the name of open up the market and bring in the competitions. Many workers in the delivering business are either hired part time through employment agencies, or work as freelancers. They aren't employees of the shipping company. And their earning depends on the number of parcels they delivery. The more they delivery, the more they can earn. So speed is essential. Even for part time workers working in the sorting center. They have to meet a quota per hour. if the container has many big heavy items, you won't make the norm. If you keep missing the norm, you will lose your job. I worked one summer in those place a few years ago..