Pack it in...

It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you had a good Easter, and that the first week back in the real world hasn't been too much of a shock.

The news that the Government has launched a campaign with the truly terrible name of Get A Bag Habit has reminded me of an interesting story. Not about plastic bags in particular – even though, as you might expect, I'm not their biggest fan – but packaging in general.

Like most online retailers, reusing our packaging makes sense, both for the environment and cutting costs. Deliveries come in, we reuse what we can, and so we thought, everyone was happy.

Now, I have a friend that runs a rather well-known e-commerce site. He's always used 'fresh' packaging on the products he sends out, which is quite a considerable amount.

About a month ago, he decided to recycle what he could in-house, mainly as an experiment to see how much he could save.

However, he said that as soon as he made the switch, he began receiving around five or six complaints a week about his product's 'appearance' – enough to make him change his mind.

I'll put my hands up and say we're not always the best at getting our corners square or our tape nice and tidy. In fact, it would be fair to call the occasional parcel we send out a little rough around the edges. The important thing is to make sure that the product inside gets to you in a perfect condition.

However, I've been racking my brains to figure exactly who would complain about it. I've drawn a blank so far though, so send your answers to the usual address. Watch out though – I'll be taking notes on how they look...