During Boxing Week sales, I ordered a Lord & Taylor cashmere cardigan on sale from The Bay a.k.a. The Hudson's Bay online. The cardigan arrived about a week later in a very large plastic bubble wrap envelope.
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| This envelope was well over a foot long and wide. |
When I opened this, I found a plastic wrapped high quality large cardboard box that says "Lord & Taylor." There was also the receipt and a packing slip from The Bay.
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| Why did this box inside a plastic envelope come wrapped in another layer of plastic? |
I took off the plastic wrap.
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| So far the packaging included a large bubble wrap envelope, packing slip, receipt, plastic bag, and a large cardboard box. |
I opened the box. Inside was another lid, this time made of clear plastic, proclaiming that this was a cashmere robe (it could be used as this if you were quite short, but it was marketed as a tie front cardigan) and the original manufacturer's suggested price.
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| Why does this box have a plastic insert? |
I took this additional lid off and finally hit the cardigan, along with tissue paper.
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| Tissue paper inside the cardigan. |
The cardigan had its tags and a very very meagre spare thread that really couldn't be used to repair much more than the tiniest of holes, so I suppose Lord & Taylor wants this cardigan to be basically disposable, so that you'll just buy another one as soon as it gets a hole in it. We are living in a disposable society after all.
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| Gee thanks for the cashmere thread to repair holes with. What a generous amount, Lord & Taylor. |
When I stacked all of the packaging together, I was amazed that one cashmere cardigan, that could have fit in a much smaller bubble wrap envelope and could have been sent like that without any box or additional plastic or anything could have resulted in this much garbage/recycling/waste. Every business needs to start assessing how much packaging they're using to send out purchases now that so many people are buying items online instead of in stores. Yes, some items that are fragile like electronics and glass need more packaging, but a sweater does not need this much packaging.
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| This really is an astonishing amount of waste for one sweater. |
This Lord & Taylor cashmere cardigan from The Bay a.k.a. The Hudson's Bay is a prime example of overpackaging (and I bought a different style of Lord & Taylor cashmere sweater for someone this winter in store from The Bay and it came with zero packaging, so this is online shopping causing overpackaging in this particular instance).
P.S. On January 20th, 16 days after receiving my sweater in the mail, I discovered two holes along one seam of the sweater. I have contacted Hudson's Bay and am waiting for their customer service department to deal with this extremely disappointing turn of events. The Hudson's Bay Twitter contact person is very helpful and quick though and was able to collect information from me and then send it to the customer service department to start an escalation process very soon after I tweeted them. As I stated above, there is definitely not enough thread to make more than one micro repair to this sweater and really a two week period of wear before it has holes makes this sweater almost disposable. Disposable cashmere? What will our society think of next? AJEG
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| Two holes at the seam of the sweater have formed after only 16 days of having this sweater in my house. Shockingly bad quality. |
P.P.S. January 26, 2017- I have received an email from the customer service department at Lord & Taylor/ The Hudson's Bay apologizing for the poor workmanship of the sweater and offering a full refund as there are no equivalent cardigans to replace mine with. While a hole-free cashmere sweater is preferable, at least The Hudson's Bay is standing behind their merchandise. I have accepted this proposed resolution. AJEG
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