PLEASE READ AND UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING:

I need to make sure everyone understands how to properly ship material to us. Lately we have been having more and more issues with folks sending boxes of material that frankly are unacceptable. Here is a list of NO NO's:

- Do not use sheets of paper to divide your materials!

This is not sorting and separating. When that box arrives here do you know what we see when we open it? E-soup with crumbled sheets of paper mixed in.

Each grade of material needs to be in its own box, bag or bound using twine or something. Just layering boards and junk in a box and then covering each layer with paper does not work and do not do it.

I know there are some Youtube videos out there that show customers packing boxes that way...they are wrong. Do not do it!

This is an example of E-Soup. Do not do this:



- Do not mix baggies and boards.

If you are bagging CPUS, RAM or other small items (even hard drive boards etc) you MUST put the bags together in their own box. You can then place that smaller box of all of your baggies inside it in your main box.

If you fail to take head of this warning I can tell you what will happen. Your baggies will be absolutely shredded by the time they arrive. That box of motherboards that was dumped into the box not only destroyed the box to a point where there are holes all throughout but the baggies inside look like grated cheese. Oh, and all of the cpus and ram that were tossed in baggies mixed with those boards? They are now sprinkled into the bottom of your box, likely leaving a trail of gold from your house to our dock as all of the little items find there way out the holes. Remember...we only pay for what arrives so that can be costly.

Treat your shipments with more respect than just scrap. Use common sense and ask yourself if that 60 pounds of ewaste is going to make it there intact, unmixed and still sorted. Frankly, 60 lbs is too much scrap for a cardboard box in my opinion.

- E-SOUP is EVIL!

I have been extremely forgiving in the past. As some of you know, I will issue a warning about e-soup before we reduce the rate. The last thing I want to do is cost a guy or gal money. But that respect goes both ways. You must remember a human is on the other end of that box and that human gets paid by the hour. If a box requires us to pay someone extra in order to clean a messy box, we will start charging for it.

Today, we spent 1 hour hour on a 50 pound box of absolute chaos. Not cool. Please take this to heart. If you don't care enough to take the time to sort and separate your material, we won't either. It is a two way street. Apparently the material was separated enough to get weights then just dumped in a box. Do not be that guy! It will NOT work out for you.

- RETURN NAME AND ADDRESS ON OUTSIDE OF EVERY BOX!

It amazes me how many people ship $1000+ dollar boxes to me with no return name and address. This is basic stuff here. I cannot imagine shipping anything without properly identifying myself and my return address.

Each week a number of packages arrive with no return info. That is fine I guess...until the label gets damaged and our address is no longer readable. (it happens more than you think!!)

How will the carrier know what to do? No return address, destination address is obscured. Someone is out some scrap. Believe it or not, the postal inspector will eventually open your box and look for an invoice. Would you believe that most people who do not use a return address also do not include an invoice? Believe it.

It took a customer 3 months to recover his missing box of ram from the postal service. It was located in a sorting facility somewhere between there and here. He had a tracking number but the box was anonymous and the label destroyed with no invoice inside. Bummer.

- PACKING LIST WITH NAME, INVENTORY, CONTACT AND PAY PREFERENCE IN EVERY BOX!

Again, self explanatory. It never ceases to amaze me how many people pack hundreds of dollars of stuff in a box and never bother to include contact information.

We receive 1000's of pounds of material EACH WEEK! Can you imagine if no one cared enough to put their name and contact in the order? Do not be that guy. As much as I want to give you personalized service, you still must follow common sense steps and let me know who you are. I know it seems logical that I would know it is your shipment...I mean how many other guys are sending out 15 pounds of 486 chips? You would be surprised...but do not make it a surprise for us.

- ALWAYS GET AND SAVE YOUR TRACKING INFO

When you ship, always ship with tracking and keep your number! In fact, you should email it to us right away. We will likely not respond to that email, but it is a good idea to have it on record.

If you ship a box, and it shows as delivered but for some reason we fail to pay (don't worry I will go out of my way to correct the issue) as long as you have a pre-emailed invoice (as in you sent a list of the contents before you shipped) and if the tracking shows delivered, you are covered. Period.

- FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION

As much of a pain as this seems, this is for your own benefit. I want to be able to pay you the highest rate possible, as quickly and as accurately as possible. By following the above guidelines you will mitigate all potential issues.

I am a fair, reasonable guy and I know that it can be overwhelming to correctly grade, sort and ship as accurately as you can. In my almost 2 decades of doing this I have learned to tell the difference between someone who is simply new at the escrap game and made a few rookie mistakes versus someone who just didn't give a scrap and threw it all in a box and said "let them figure it out". We will and it will not be in their favor.

To finish off this post I will say that from now on we will be setting unsorted and messy boxes aside from our normal processing in order to give priority to those who took the time do do it right.

So in summary, if your box has any of the above issues, there is a good chance that your payout will be delayed until such a time when we have the time to clean the mess and depending on the severity, there will likely be sorting fees.

SUMMARY:

Properly sort. Do not layer boards thinking that is sufficient. It is not.

Do not mix baggies and boards.

Do not overstuff your box.

Do not send anonymous packages.

Include return name and address on outside of box.

Include packing list and contact/payment info inside box, preferable an invoice generated on our website.

I would like to add 1 other thing to that list.

Do not ship blind packages. What I mean by blind packages is if you do not know what the item is or if we will even buy it please do not ship it.

We often have to tell a customer that the items that they sent have 0 value to us. Had they checked with me 1st before shipping the item I could have told them that they would be wasting their money on shipping sending items that we do not buy.

So if you have a question as to whether we buy an item or if you cannot find it on our price list please contact me and give me the opportunity to tell you whether it is an item that we are interested in before you spend your hard earned money shipping it to me for a loss.

Let me take a bit of heat here. Somewhere along the way my very specific targeted comments about using cardboard for separating got taken out of context and became paper on YouTube and daily.

To reiterate in a targeted statement.
Cardboard is not a bunch of greeting cards (card stock), pizza boxes (paperboard), frozen food boxes (wetboard). Cardboard, exactly this type, multi layer corrugated.
It only works in one situation. You’re stacking nearly identically sized boards, pre-bound, in a snug fit box. Placing metal socket server boards on top of a thick cardboard layer on top of large socket server boards. Placing 100 processors in an A3H1 box inside a box with a bunch of other full boxes.

Use real corrugated cardboard.

I use commercial zip ties (50LB resistance) to strap boards together.
Making strapped piles of ram, hard drive boards motherboard. Us a ᛭ strap method to bind them tight.
This keeps boards from sliding around. That helps protect the box and the boards.
Don’t use dollar store zip ties. I can break them with my hands. They won’t survive board shipping. So buy commercial ones. The “weight” is not the weight limit of the snap, but how much flat edge weight the plastic can withstand without breaking.

Keep in mind this generic less than accurate but easy to remember idea.
A one pound board falling side down from 20 feet with impact with 20ftlb force.
It’s not correct but it makes a valuable idea to remember.
Parcel tossing is quite a literal statement. Every post office does it. Things get dropped along the way.

Scotch tape doesn’t seal boxes. Don’t use it.
Paper tape isn’t for scrap boards. Or anything rough and sharp. Don’t use it.
Masking tape doesn’t seal anything. It’s meant to be easily removed from a surface without damage. Don’t use it.
Do not use school glue or a glue stick to seal or stick anything. It won’t survive the trip. Don’t use it.

I’ve had, generally, good luck with small piles in freezer bags when packed tight inside small boxes. Those inside larger boxes. Again pre bound. Don’t use sandwich baggies. They won’t make it.

Put pins in pill bottles. Don’t use baggies, they won’t make it.
Don’t ship pin connectors in plastic mailers. Nor paper envelopes. Boardsort receives an empty bag and the post office puts a bunch of loose connectors on a shelf in Denver or Dubuque.
This goes for computer boards as well. I wish ebay sellers could figure this out too!

Other notes. Cause I’ve tried it.
Food wrap is not a substitute for stretch wrap on pallets.

Press and seal doesn’t work for boards. Or chips. Or much of anything other than burgers and chicken legs.

Paper and plastic mailers will rarely arrive with the escrap still inside.

Don’t glue paper labels to boxes with school supplies. Gorilla makes a good strong super stick for $2.99. Use it.

Don’t use EZ Start tape for escrap boxes. (You shouldn’t use it for anything over a few pounds).

Tape with, AND ACROSS flaps on boxes.

Remember boardsort cares about your shipments, just like you do. In between, they only care about getting it there. Not how well it holds up.

Don’t trust the labels from the self service kiosk to stay attached. Tape over the non sticky edge.

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Excellent commentary Lost! I agree with everything you said.

I should also add that you should never use packing peanuts or shredded paper as filler.

We had a customer (you know who you are lol) who used an entire unwound VHS tape as packing material. That did not go over well on processing day. Do not do that either!

It has been a challenging week of processing, probably the worst sorting we have seen yet.

So I need to continue to add to this list.

Cell phone boards can ONLY come from a cell phone. Not a cordless home phone, not a Palm pilot or PDA. Actual real cell phones. Period. It is not rocket science guys! And they must not have screens, metal or anything. We pay a premium for those boards. If you are expecting the premium rate they must be premium boards meaning clean and pure.

Let me be clear. I will make corrections for you as a courtesy to an extent. Anyone who has worked with me knows that. I am as fair as they come. However, if you ship me 10 pounds of cell boards and it is littered with junk, non cell and other stuff, we will not pick the cell boards out. It will be purchased as Peripheral or less depending on the mix.

Again, read this carefully: If you mix non-matching material, we will not pick it out. We will buy it as a mix. Folks have been taking advantage of our willingness to correct shipments. As stated in the above post, if you do not care enough to take the time to do it right you cannot expect others to care more than you.

To give you an idea of the size of this problem, more than HALF of the boxes we processed this week had bags mixed with boards. I can only do so much, the customers will have to start taking responsibility if they expect to receive the sorted rate. Mixing bags with boards is a horrible idea and almost always results in a loss of money for the customer. When the bottom of the box is littered with small items like chips, flat packs, IC's, there is no way we will get that all cleaned and sorted in a timely matter. So what happens is the processing line comes to a halt and creates delays.

I cannot stress this enough. Sloppy boxes will be set aside for a time when we can afford to do the work that should have been done before shipping.

I really do not want to be forced to extend our payout timeline to 2-3 weeks instead of our current 1 week turnaround. But if things do not improve with respect to the quality of the sorting, separating and packing, we will have no other choice due to the fact we are spending an hour on one box and we have 100 boxes. Think about it.

Lostinlodos, have I read correctly that you use stripped low and mid grade boards for box reinforcement, category dividers, etc...?

No do not do that.

Use smaller boxes or bind the sorted matching boards together but do not stack and then use other circuit boards as dividers, that does not work.

Loose boards are a no-no, even if your intentions were good.

If you need to use boards to reinforce your box you are either putting too much in a box or using the wrong box.

At the time yes. Not a good idea in general. And I couldn’t quickly find the post do edit it.

Context is something that tends to get lost in today's cut and past tweet world.
Such cases are rare, the outlier not the every day practice.
They are targeted for very specific case uses.
Stripped is just that. Bare, or nearly bare.

Here’s an example from c64128’s bb.
I had suggested wrapping expansion pins in paper towels on an apple thread. At another site. These are sets of 8 pins, 8 inches long and the joiner is 4 inches across.
My suggestion was to wrap the in paper towels before bagging them because they would punch through anything you tried to ship them in when loose, and pill bottles are long enough.
3 days later another user posted on c that “lost said to wrap scrap in paper towels”. I fixed it there.
I don’t know where that post went between Mac6-8 and c64128. How many people read something close what I posted out of context.

Obviously I need to go through our site here and clean up some of my posts.
But a bit of common sense is also needed.
Stick 4 motherboards in a bunch of paper towels and there’s going to be confetti in the box when it arrives.

Wrapping 4 lbs of ram sticks in half an inch of paper towels, taping the wad, placing it in a bag, putting the bag in a box, and putting the box in a bigger box, is VERY different from putting ram in a paper towel and tossing it on top.

Using 4 striped TV boards to reinforce the sides of a box (yes I left the relay transformer on to hold the stack in place), a box with one class in it, makes sense. Chris et al is not going to have any understanding issues when he lifts the bound stack of of motherboards out of the box.
But I’ve always been clear that stripped means stripped in my own top level posts. STRIPPED, BARE, EMPTY. (Or damn close).

I’ve also suggested wire as packing. Again in context of all my posts. Pre bundled boards. They open the box. Pull out the bundle, and dump the wire on a scale. Putting 6 small baggies in an 18” cube filled with wire does not a happy buyer make.

For new users, I suggest you read through some of the other posts. Try to follow the context of the whole post. If the discussion thread is for one type of board the entire discussion should sit in that class alone.

This site has many dozens of new users each week, making one or two topics and moving on.
I a) try to handle that post alone, and b) depend on the users having read the stickies at the top of the thread.

If you don’t understand something ask!
This is generally a friendly community.
We’re all human (except the home products bot that keeps visiting to post adverts).

I make mistakes. Everyone does. Just ask.
And feel free to call out my mistakes. (Post links help). Last thing I want to do leave bad info up.

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Okay, I was just wondering. I was not trying to annoy anyone with my question, sorry if I accidently did.

I don't remember any specific posts, but I know that it was mentioned in a few of the old posts.

I think Lost said it best, a bit of common sense is needed.

And if you would like to pack the bottom of the box with nothing but wire that would be acceptable.

I am not a scrap nazi and am pretty understanding. As long as you use basic common sense along with following the instructions that are posted all over this site you will be just fine.