Odd Shipping Arrangement

[Nimrod6134]

A few days back I purchased The Battle of Helms Deep from Amazon, taking advantage of the discount posted here (thanks guys!). Today it arrived and I was surprised to find the set was not shipped in a second box, rather the shipping information was attached directly to the Lego packaging itself. The seals of the box were also broken completely, I was able to remove the contents without opening anything myself. As far as I can tell the set is complete, 9 numbered bags, 4 instruction manuals and a sticker sheet. No baseplates or or numbered bags, save what the instruction manuals were found in. If anyone could confirm that would be awesome. Noticed the bag inventory in instruction manual 1.

Being someone who usually throws away boxes the packing labels and damage don't particularly bother me, but I've never had a set ship like this from any retailer. Has anyone else run into this?

[bigospedros]

Did it come from Amazon itself or a 3rd party seller via Amazon?

[Nimrod6134]

They list it as ships from and sold by Amazon.com. It also worked with prime so I believe it must have come from them.

[bigospedros]

Odd ... You should complain anyway ... You might get some vouchers out of it, if nothing else!

[bacon1986]

I also had a bad experience with Legos shipped by Amazon via UPS. It was in a second box but, as you can see below, it still got pretty beat up.

IMAG0037 by Sizzle1986, on Flickr

Maybe it's just their LOTR Legos they treat with such disdain.

[Ibiscribe]

I would complain, especially if you were supposed to have bought this new (versus used). Even for used items they have a rating system to indicate what condition something is in--and even "like new" implies something a lot better than what you've described.

Is it possible that the damage could have been the fault of whatever company was responsible for shipping? I've noticed with items I packed myself, sometimes they arrived in very bad condition, eg. gaping holes torn out of the box and patched back up with duct tape. And having sent and received them myself I can say that neither shipper or receiver was trying to rip me off.

[DocBlock]

I've noticed a general decline in shipping quality over he past 6 months or so. I was just discussing this the other day about how I bought something for my wife's birthday (from Newegg or Cowboom can't remember.) and how the package was similarly crushed/beat up and the product packaging showed signs of ware.

I feel like the employees simply don't care or the companies don't check up on them as much any more. UPS USPS all but FedEx seem to have gotten worse about his in my opinion.