Introduction

This article goes over the steps to return an appliance to Field Effect.

• Communicating with Field Effect
• Packing Your Appliance
  • Examples of Poor Packaging
    • 1. Rails Not Removed
    • 2. Appliance was not encased in protective materials
    • 3. Box Size Was Too Large for the Appliance
• After Shipping

Communicating with Field Effect

In most cases, clients shipping hardware will communicate with Field Effect via a support ticket. If you have not opened a ticket for your shipment, please contact support@fieldeffect.com to open one. 

Field Effect will provide a shipping label for an appliance that needs to be exchanged due to a technical issue. In all other cases, Field Effect will provide a shipping address, but clients are responsible for shipping appliances back to Field Effect.

Packing Your Appliance

When returning an appliance, please take care to package it for shipment. Poorly packaged appliances will suffer damages during shipping. 

We strongly encourage you to send back the appliance in the original packaging. This packaging is purpose-made for our appliances so will offer the best protection for an appliance in transit. In cases where you are swapping appliances, consider sending back the old appliance using the packaging sent with the new one.

If you no longer have the original packaging, here are some tips and considerations while packing your appliance: 

• Remove the rails for any rack-mounted appliances.
• Ensure that the appliance is fully encased with protective material in the box - top, bottom, sides, and all corners. The corners of devices are particular vulnerable to damage in transit. We recommend using either packing foam or bubble wrap as alternatives simply are not as reliable as standard issue packing materials. Due to the size and weight of our appliances, we strongly recommend against using either plastic bags and newspaper.
• Ensure the box size is appropriate to the appliance. Because these appliances are heavy, they will bounce around in transit. A snug fit for the protected appliance will help reduce the risks here. To assist you in picking the right size of box, the dimensions of the appliances are as follows: 

We also strongly encourage our clients to take photos of packed appliances prior to sending them to us.

Examples of Poor Packaging

This section will go over some examples of poorly packaged appliances to help you avoid some commonly observed issues.

1. Rails Not Removed

In this example, the rails were not removed before packing the appliance and it led to cause significant damage: 

2. Appliance was not encased in protective materials

The appliance below was not protected the full 360 degrees, so the corner was damaged in shipping.

3. Box Size Was Too Large for the Appliance

In the image below, the box was much too large for the appliance and the appliance was not well encased in packing materials. The appliance suffered considerable damage in transit. 

After Shipping

We recommend sending Field Effect photos of the packed appliance as well as the shipping tracking information.