Finally today, I wanted to raise a concern I’ve been hearing from many—and I mean many—Bits readers and physical media fans in recent months, which is that Amazon and other retailers are having real problems shipping Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD titles to customers without damaging them. This is particularly true of Steelbook packaging and boxed sets. What tends to happen is that the online retailers ship them not in sturdy boxes but plastic bags or padded envelopes, and then they get completely crushed in handling either by the warehouse machinery or the delivery people. This is an especially significant problem now, because many of these 4K Steelbook titles and box sets are true limited editions and they sell out quickly. So if you get a damaged copy, you might not be available to get a replacement from Amazon (etc).

When I put out a call for pictures of examples of damaged 4K packaging on our social media channels (see here), the response was overwhelming. Here’s just a small sampling of the MANY pictures we’ve received from readers in the last 24 hours…



We would like to call Amazon’s attention to this issue so they can do better in the future, and we’d like to raise all of the major Hollywood studios and boutique labels to the issue, so hopefully they can address the issue with Amazon and other retailers on their end.

This definitely should not be happening, and it certainly shouldn’t be happening as often as it appears to be. Hopefully, enough said.