I’m trying to think of a lesson to be learned from this, but so far I got nothing. I guess mistakes happen in spite of our best attempts to avoid them.

At ATS Rentals, we rent audio/visual equipment via UPS. We ship equipment like projectors and camcorders to our customers, they use them, and ship them back via UPS. Sometime last year we decided it would be nice to include a single-serving roll of box tape with each box. We thought, if the customer doesn’t have any tape handy, they can use the tape to close the box for return shipping.

This probably should have occurred to us sooner, because we did get a lot of boxes back with odd types of tape on them. We got everything from blue painter’s masking tape to pink duct tape. Apparently regular tape was not around when our customers needed it.

Also, we re-use our shipping boxes to save money and trees (unless the customer opts otherwise when placing the order). All the weird tape was ruining boxes. So by including the single serving of nice, clear, regular box tape, we hoped to be able to reuse more boxes as well as increase customer convenience.

Unfortunately, most of our nice little rolls of tape came back unused, sometimes inside boxes closed with pink duct tape. Apparently our customers didn’t know what those little mini rolls were for. So we came up with little labels that said “Box Tape – For Return Shipping” and stuck them on the tape. That worked pretty well.

Around the same time we noticed another problem. Customers were throwing away the rechargeable batteries we ship with our video lights. They looked too much like regular AA batteries and when they were dead, people were simply tossing them. So we came up with a little label that said “Rechargeable – Do Not Discard” and put it on the packs of batteries. This worked well, and we no longer had to buy so many replacement rechargeable batteries.

So we were feeling pretty good about our little innovations, until a couple of weeks ago when something in labeling land went wrong. All our little rolls of box tape went out labeled “Rechargeable – Do Not Discard“. And sure enough, this week, boxes are coming back with all varieties of duct and masking tape on the outside, and nice, little, unused, “rechargeable” rolls of box tape inside. Yeah, kind of embarrassing.

I want to know how the customers who didn’t use the tape thought through this:

Hmm. Rechargeable tape. That’s different. It’s amazing what they come up with these days. I wonder how you recharge it? Do not discard… Must be expensive. Better not use it.

“Honeeeey, do you still have that roll of pink duct tape around here?”