It’s frustrating to business owners like you who are trying to get the best deal for shipping supplies and there are companies who are using deceptive tactics.
These deceptive techniques are used for selling stretch film.
Before you buy stretch film, get familiar with the common size of the rolls as well as the weight of the box.
Be sure to get answers to these questions before you buy. Otherwise you could be getting 50-60% less material than what you paid for.
Video Transcript:
Hey everyone Ricky Chu from Chu’s Packaging Supplies here. One of the most frustrating sides of the packaging world is when companies mislabeled their products to deceive customers on what they’re actually buying. It happens in so many items, but mainly, mainly on stretch film. The whole point of companies mislabeling their boxes is to kind of be deceptive against customers.
So they don’t actually know what they’re buying or what they’re paying for. They’re trying to make you think that you’re saving money, but in the long run you’re actually spending more money. Kind of like an old school bait and switch. I’ll give you a couple of examples. This is a super film box for 18″ 80 stretch film.
As you can see here, it’s clearly labeled 18 inch for the width 1500 feet for the length 80 gauge for the thickness and 33.34 pounds for the weight of the case. Now here’s some labels that we’ve seen or come across over the years. Most of them say 18 80 18 by 80 18 x 80 or some variation of those numbers because 18″ 80 is the most commonly used name for stretch film.
But over here you see it says 18″ 80 R it doesn’t show you the length. It doesn’t say anything about that. When we actually measured it, it came out to be 600 feet in comparison to 1500 feet as a standard roll. The second one here just says 18 inches. It doesn’t stay length. It doesn’t say anything else about the information of what’s in the box.
The rest of the ones that we saw on this list measured out to be 600 feet, 800 feet or anything less than that. See if you compare that to a regular 1500 foot roll, you’re getting half or even less than half. When you think you’re actually saving money. You’re really not. This is the most recent one. We came across the label just says 18 x 80.
Nothing else about length, gauge, weight of the case, anything like that. And when we saw the roll, it was actually really, really small. Other companies use total square footage, square meters for the whole case, because they know nobody’s going to spend the time reverse calculating to figure out how much material is on each roll.
So like I said, like there should be transparency on purchasing and products because you’re spending your hard-earned money on it and you should know what you’re buying. So if someone quotes you and you think you’re saving 20 to 30% on price, but you’re actually getting 50 to 60% less material, the numbers just don’t add up correctly.
Resin used to make stretch film is priced by the weight. So you might see a variance of 10%, 15% here and there, depending on who’s selling it and where it’s coming in from. But if you’re seeing something that’s 20, 25, 30% less expensive than what you’re paying for, it should throw up a red flag. It’s like the old saying says, if it’s too good to be true, then it probably is. A quick couple of ways to tell right off the bat is the weight and the size.
So, like I said earlier on the case here, a standard 18″ 80 should weigh around 33, 34 pounds per case. There’s anything less than that, then you’re not getting an 18″ 80. A lot of the cases we saw earlier were in the 16 pound range. That’s a big difference between 34 and 16 pounds. Another way is visually, it’s very simple to tell here, we have a standard 18″ 80 roll.
You can see the size here, and this is one of the short rolls that we’ve come into. Side-by-side that’s a major, major difference. So you might be saving 20% on this, but you’re losing 50, 60% of material on this one. For more information on our entire stretch film lineup, please visit our website at www.chuspkg.com.
