Yet again have I got a carton box probally delivered by airplane from Hungary containing a folder "Global Services and Support", a paper saying my SSP is renewed and a copy of the invoice. The box weighs about ten-twenty times than papers.. How is NI think? This a waste of resouces, an regular envolope or even better a email would be a better solution.

Yes, same thing here in USA, always delivered by Fed Ex or some other really expensive means. Since my business is in a suburban residential area, the Fed Ex truck often makes a special trip.

Another software vendor told me that they send a big box for a similar piece of paper, so that the recieving department of big companies are more likely to log it in and match it up with the purchase order so that the invoice could be paid. But that was years ago & by now accounting departments must have figured out that sometimes something as intangible as an email with an activation code in it can constitute the deliverable for a pretty big P.O.

Ah well, its just a little CO2, no big deal...

I would guess it has more to do with an assembly line that just drops stuff in a box on a conveyor.

To send out envelopes they would need another line with an envelope stuffer.

Remember when pondering dilemas of this type that it is $$$ not reason that makes the final decision.

Ben

I doubt that NI owns any assembly line for sales packaging. Comapnies usually outsource this kind of things. It's really a business decission.

Tomi

Contact NI, directly, and let them know how you feel.

Maybe they are justifying the ridiculous shipping charges that they now charge which is a percentage (10% ?) of the purchase price. i.e. if you bought SOFTWARE worth a few thousand dollars, you get charged hundreds of dollars to SHIP a few CD's!!

Maybe this justifies the expensive looking cardboard carton as well.


Neville.

I have contacted NI about this.

Thanks for your feedback. I know this post was a while back, but I wanted to let you know that we have taken this and previous feedback to heart and are moving towards making these service related transactions paperless. Namely, we have already taken steps to eliminate the SSP carton box and related material and should stop shipping them towards the end of this month (October).

Again, thanks for the feedback. Please let me know if you have any additional feedback regarding SSP.

Craig Reynolds
Software Services - National Instruments

That's most-excellent news Craig Thanks for letting us know.

Well the same boxes this year too

Anders, are you sure the boxes are made of paper this year? Maybe they are made of plastic to save the rain forests

I suspect we have to allow more time for the transition, after all they will have to close down and layoff the Ireland branch when this happens.

Ben

Tomi I suspect it is either Finnish or Swedish cartoon board made of pine with slight mix of spruce... We have longer fibers in the north..

Sorry for the confusion. As Ben mentioned, it has taken some time for us to transition completely (though he was only partially right - we're not removing or laying off any branches!)

Per my previous post we removed the extra SSP carton from the shipments of new and upgrade licenses in October 2007, and will finish with the removal of the (now notorious) SSP cartons that ship at renewal time in Q2 of this year. There will still be a few similar areas for improvement in our shipping process, but that should address the majority of SSP instances at least. If for some reason this still seems inconsistent with your experience, please feel free to contact me and I can follow up accordingly.


Thanks,
Craig Reynolds
Software Services, National Instruments
craig.reynolds@ni.com