compared to the traditional versions of the products, frustrationfree products have earned on average a 73 percent reduction in negative feedback on the amazon site.seattle &mdash doug herrington&rsquos office at amazon.com suggests that he is particularly bad at getting items out of their packages. along his wall, there is a philips norelco shaver still in its plastic clamshell casing, coffee pods in their retail display containers and a bottle of tide inside a box.but mr. herrington, vice president for consumables at amazon, is trying to make a point with a typical online purchase, &ldquoyou&rsquove got a ton of packaging and a ton of work ahead of you,&rdquo he said.for nearly two years, amazon has been trying to get manufacturers to adopt &ldquofrustrationfree packaging&rdquo that gets rid of plastic cases and airbubble wrap &mdash major irritants for consumers and one of amazon&rsquos biggest sources of customer complaints.but the frustration persists. only about 600 of the millions of products amazon sells come in frustrationfree versions. and other big online retailers, like walmart.com and target.com, have not embraced the new packaging, even when manufacturers make it available.batteries in the typical retail plastic packaging, top, and, below, packaged in cardboard.&ldquoa lot of it is just the inertia of making changes,&rdquo said stephen lester, science director at the center for health, environment and justice, a nonprofit environmental group. &ldquowhenever you have a system set up to run your business, making any change means time and money.&rdquofor brick and mortar retailers, traditional packaging remains popular because it can help deter theft. but in web shopping, there is general agreement that the alternative packaging is a hit with consumers, and that it is simple for packaging companies to create. it is also environmentally friendly, using recycled and recyclable cardboard rather than plastic and wire ties, quicker to produce than the retail packaging and costs less.now amazon, still determined to get more manufacturers to sign up, is making the case by taking the angry customer feedback on oldschool packages directly to the product makers. compared to the traditional versions of the products, frustrationfree products have earned on average a 73 percent reduction in negative feedback on the amazon site.the strategy worked for philips, the electronics company. it recently made the packaging change on its essence electronic toothbrush when the company saw the feedback. &ldquoit wasn&rsquot necessarily that the product was the issue, it was the unpack experience &mdash you&rsquove got to get scissors or knives,&rdquo said stephen cheung, senior consumer marketing manager for philips oral healthcare.philips asked the supplier allpaktrojan if it could create a new package. because manufacturers usually use one supplier for the plastic part of their packages and another for the cardboard, &ldquoeven before you make anything you&rsquove lost a little efficiency in the design process,&rdquo said dave hoover, sales manager for allpaktrojan.with this project, though, allpaktrojan could use a single material, and it went through a machine just once instead of the two to three times required for the traditional package. &ldquofrom design to finish, it&rsquos as efficient as it gets,&rdquo he said.continue reading the main story continue reading the main storycontinue reading the main storywithin three weeks, allpaktrojan had designed the new container, tested it by dropping it from various heights and putting it on a vibration table and had it ready. the toothbrush&rsquos travel case protected the brush head, and cardboard compartments held the charger and toothbrush base. without the fancy printing, shiny cardboard backing and plastic, &ldquoit&rsquos much less expensive,&rdquo mr. hoover said. and the environmental benefit was significant the square footage of material used was much smaller, and the cardboard was recycled and recyclable.philips said it was so happy with the change that it was looking to switch the packaging for other items. the company said it was also pushing other online retailers to adopt this packaging, to tepid response.shannon jenest, a philips spokeswoman, said the company had initiated discussions. &ldquothey&rsquore open to the conversation, and i&rsquod say we&rsquoll probably expand our frustrationfree packaging options with amazon before we would see it come to another one of our partners.&rdquocontinue reading the mainenvironmental experts attribute the slow response to the intransigence of big manufacturers, the complexity in having different packages for physical retail and electronic retail and a lack of coordination among the major ecommerce companies.&ldquoone of the biggest hurdles is to convince a company that it&rsquos worthwhile, or the volume is there, to sell the same product in two different formats,&rdquo said anne johnson, director of the sustainable packaging coalition, an industry working group operated by the nonprofit institute greenblue. and because retailers did not work together on a common standard, &ldquoyou don&rsquot end up with unified approaches to these issues, therefore you never solve these issues,&rdquo she said.amazon introduced frustrationfree packaging in november 2008 to minimize what jeffrey p. bezos, the chief executive, called &ldquowrap rage.&rdquo clamshells exist to make products look good in stores and to help prevent theft by being difficult to open surreptitiously &mdash neither concerns of amazon. even with products like coffee pods, amazon customers would receive packages designed for retailers. so amazon worked with manufacturers to design cardboard packages that contained the products and could be shipped straight to consumers.while there were hiccups, like hard drives damaged in transit amazon switched that packaging back, for the most part, the change has been popular. in addition to philips, recent converts include polaroid and procter & gamble. brands like duracell, bounty and tide introduced their own frustrationfree packages.duracell, which offers a 28pack in a frustrationfree version on amazon, had &ldquobeen getting rave reviews from consumers about the packs on amazon,&rdquo said bob jacobs, duracell marketing director. mr. jacobs said duracell made that packaging available to all web sites that sold the 28pack, but a check on target.com and walmart.com showed that those were still selling only the plasticencased retail packs.target said it did not have a similar packaging program but was exploring more ecommercefriendly options with some vendors. walmart.com said it reviewed the size of shipping boxes and tried to minimize the environmental impact.&ldquoit&rsquos such a winwin proposal,&rdquo said nadia shouraboura, vice president for global fulfillment at amazon. &ldquowe don&rsquot expect to make a miracle in a week, but i think over time it&rsquos going to happen.&rdquo 
