Do employees do this on purpose? It is something I have always wondered.

Having worked in retail it is very easy to turn the box cutter just a bit in order to not cut the stock.

I'd say it's probably not done on purpose. As a retail worker, I've sliced things open with my cutter from time to time without intending to.

I agree, I don't think they do it on purpose.

This could be prevented if they would ship things with packaging material instead of just putting them in there packed without any protection at all. I know why they do it, to cut down on costs and perhaps environmental reasons too, but I wonder how many brand new DVDs are damaged in transit to the stores.

As a young boy, I worked at a supermarket and soda bottles would be delivered in boxes of 8. Sometimes, while building displays, I would slash 2 liter bottles of Coke with my razor by mistake. Fun for all standing within a good 5 or 6 feet of the explosion! But I digress........

Its the way they pack dvds and cds. Spine up in the box. No real way to avoid it, other than having the person opening the box pay attention, or put some sort of packing on top of the product, but that would cost more.

While working retail I've seen items arrive with these marks before the box the store gets is even open. Obviously they had been packed in a larger box which was sent to a distribution center and then said boxes were opened and divvied up into smaller packages for individual stores.

the master packs usually come in boxes of 30 or so. Like it has been stated earlier, it's not hard to put your blade in too deep and slice a few. However, Guru is also correct. There are other boxes that come in where the master packs have been divided up and shipped to different stores and they could come in already sliced. I've done my fair share of opening up media items and since I am a collector, and I know what is in the cases, I don't cut very deep anymore.

When I was working as a Manager at Borders, boxes of back catalog or refill releases (usually mixed) came shipped different.

They were shipped with product on one side, a thick cardboard divider in the middle and more product on the other side. The cardboard divider matched up perfectly with the tape on the top, so that would prevent DVD's/Boxes getting their spines cut.

But as others were mentioned, usually with New Releases things weren't shipped that way, so it was pretty easy to unintentionally mess a couple copies up.