A subtweety primer, for folks who ship stuff from online sales:
If you are selling glass jars of honey over international borders, it doesn’t matter if you carefully wrap all jars in bubble wrap…if you push them against one side of a too-small cardboard box! Nor does the amount of air-packs and newspaper you stuffed into the other side.
I’d like to think the bad arrangement was Customs doing its Thing, and not you…but YOU chose the small box. Remember: breakables go into the center of the box, with at least 3″ of crushable packing around them on all sides. Putting ‘Fragile Glass Inside’ tape outside was apparently taken as an invitation, not a warning, because this box came looking like it had barely survived an airplane crash. Nothing was broken, by sheer luck.
We won’t discuss how you managed not to pack a single jar of the honey actually ordered.
Also, if you are selling delicate porcelain jewelry components off Etsy, please don’t shove them all into a small clear plastic bag together, tape the bag tightly, then shove that into a padded mailer. Ceramics crunch and break when crushed by, say, automatic mail sorting machines. Again, by sheer stupid luck, not a piece was broken. But they should have been separately bagged or bagged individually in plastic foam, then shipped in a more rigid box.
I wrap and ship things professionally, and have for the past 20+ years through several jobs. If you don’t know how to wrap things, and you cannot afford to have your local UPS, DHL, or FedEx depot do it for you…LEARN.
Here is a UPS guideline set to packing.
Here’s the catalog for Gaylord, a museum-grade archival firm whose products I use a lot when prepping pieces for shipping or longterm storage.
Etsy itself even has this comprehensive guide: How to pack and ship anything.
Do these things, and you will have happier customers. Return customers. Customers who will not call you out with snide blog posts.
Ciao!