Phillips Sonicare Electric Toothbrush Replacement Heads- Lots of Waste in a Very Expensive Package

My husband and I use a Phillips Sonicare EasyClean Electric Toothbrush (the charger is original, the toothbrush itself had to be replaced after a drop that ruined it, but we found a replacement on eBay for an okay price) and while we like the product itself (it seems to clean the teeth well and with sensitive heads lead to minimal gum irritation), buying its replacement heads is always a painful task. First of all, for a package of only three little replacement heads, it's crazily expensive ($39.99 Canadian plus tax in most places for the sensitive type that we buy, which is $45.59 including tax per pack, or $15.20 per toothbrush head! N.B. the replacement heads were not that expensive to begin with- it's one of those situations where they release a new type of toothbrush, make its replacement heads way cheaper than the ones for the older models, you buy that new model, then they raise the price of the new model's replacement heads over and over again until you contemplate whether or not it's worth upgrading to a newer model or changing companies altogether.). It's also annoying, because there are so many different types of heads for the myriad of different types of Phillips toothbrushes, so you always have to remember which is your particular model of toothbrush, and check on the package of replacement heads that they will work for your particular model (our replacement head package lists seven different types of Phillips toothbrushes that this type of replacement head apparently works with and there are several other types of heads to choose from in the Phillips Sonicare section of the toothbrush replacement head aisle).

Further, when you get the package of replacement heads home, there are other frustrations. Our particular type of replacement head package come with three replacement heads. Who is this pack geared towards? If you have two people in a house, then you have to buy two packages to even out the number of replacement heads. If you have a family of four, then it creates an even worse numbers situation.

Then you have to get the package open. It's one of those hermetically sealed plastic creations that turns the most docile of consumer into a brutal baboon, grunting and pulling at the package to try to get inside.

A surprisingly large package for three little toothbrush heads. Guess they're trying to make it look like more value since you're paying over $15.00 per toothbrush head . . .

I had to cut open the package at least partially before my brute force released the contents of the package.

This oversized package is full garbage.

And boy is there ever a lot of stuff in that plastic package. First of all, the package is too big for just three little toothbrush heads (executives of Phillips might chime in here with the exception to packaging rule that if something is likely to be shoplifted then the package can be made unnecessarily big- but in most stores they put the electric tracking stickers in these packages so that if they are shoplifted, the store alarms go off). Secondly, there are several different components to the package including a plastic tray to hold the toothbrush heads, three toothbrush heads each with its own plastic travelling cover, a little plastic bag with three different coloured plastic bands that you can use to change the colour of the band of your toothbrush head with if you want to have a different one from whoever else you're living with, a paper coupon for the Phillips Sonicare Airfloss (coupons for more toothbrush heads would be more useful, I'm never going to buy that other contraption no matter how many coupons I see for it during the course of buying packages of toothbrush heads), two paper card inserts that go at the front and back of the plastic package, and the unnecessarily large plastic container itself that houses all this garbage.

Why are there so many unnecessary components in here? Some people will recycle them, but I'm guessing a lot of this crap will end up in the landfill never ever used and completely unnecessary to begin with.

Just look at the empty plastic package next to the only necessary items, the three toothbrush heads. How much waste could we cut down on if we had a small package with less junk crammed into it? Phillips Sonicare Electric Toothbrush Replacement Heads are definitely an example of overpackaging.

Why is this package so big? Cut down on the packaging, Phillips, you're wasting precious resources and making the end product more expensive for your customers. We definitely don't enjoy paying over $15.00 per toothbrush head and as you keep raising the price, more and more customers will just decide that your product is not worth it.