Package a Desktop Mac for Courier Collection

To package a desktop Mac for courier collection: use a double-walled box at least 5 cm larger than the machine on every side, protect the screen face with cardboard and soft padding, keep an iMac upright, fill all voids so nothing shifts, and tape every seam in an H pattern. Total cost if you buy everything: under £15.

That single paragraph is genuinely the whole method - the rest of this guide is the detail that stops each step going wrong, plus specific box sizes for every desktop Mac and three solutions for the classic problem of having binned the original packaging years ago.

What materials do you need before you start?

Gather everything first; the most common packing mistake is improvising halfway through with a tea towel and hope. You need:

• A double-walled cardboard box (two layers of corrugation - pinch the edge and you will feel them). Single-wall supermarket boxes crush under a 9 kg iMac in a courier cage.
• Large-bubble bubble wrap, one 10-metre roll for an iMac, half that for a mini or Studio. Foam sheets or air pillows also work.
• Two flat cardboard sheets cut slightly larger than the screen, for sandwiching the display face.
• Good parcel tape - a full roll of 48 mm packing tape, not household sticky tape.
• Void fill: scrunched kraft paper, more bubble wrap, or clean towels and clothing at a pinch. Avoid loose polystyrene chips as the only protection; they migrate away from corners exactly where impacts happen.

Do not pack a keyboard, mouse or power cable loose beside the machine. Wrap each separately and tape the bundle to the inside box wall, away from the screen - an unwrapped Magic Mouse rattling around a parcel is a scratch machine.

What size box does each desktop Mac need?

The 5 cm rule drives everything: machine dimensions plus at least 5 cm of padding per side, ideally 7 to 8 cm for glass-fronted models. In practice:

Where do you find boxes this size without paying courier-shop prices? Three reliable sources: bicycle shops and appliance retailers discard double-walled boxes daily and give them away if asked; a 32-inch TV box from a supermarket's collection cage fits a 24-inch iMac almost perfectly; and online packaging suppliers sell purpose-made "iMac shipping boxes" with foam inserts for £12 to £20 delivered, which is the low-stress option if the machine is worth hundreds.

How do you pack an iMac step by step?

1. Power down, unplug, and remove nothing. The stand stays on - never attempt to detach it, as it is not designed to come off and forcing it damages the hinge.
2. Sandwich the screen. Place one cardboard sheet flat against the glass, held with two loops of tape that touch only cardboard, never the machine. This spreads any point impact across the whole face.
3. Wrap the machine. Three full layers of bubble wrap around everything, bubbles facing inward, taped so the wrap cannot slide. Give the bottom corners of the screen a double dose - corner strikes cause the overwhelming majority of transit cracks.
4. Build a floor. Put 5 to 8 cm of dense padding in the base of the box before the machine goes in. Scrunched paper compressed firmly works; soft loose fill does not.
5. Load it upright. Screen facing a long box wall, never lying flat. An iMac on its back turns every speed bump into a hammer blow on laminated glass.
6. Pack the voids hard. Fill every gap at the sides and top until the machine cannot move when you rock the box firmly. The shake test is binary: any movement or dull thud means more fill.
7. Seal with an H-taped seam - one strip along the closing seam, one across each end - then repeat on the bottom. Add "FRAGILE" and "THIS WAY UP" arrows on at least two faces.

A Mac mini or Mac Studio is the same philosophy minus the glass anxiety: wrap generously, float the machine in the centre of a small box, and pass the shake test. Ten minutes, start to finish.

What if you have no original box and no time to hunt for one?

Three workable answers, in ascending order of effort:

The double-box method. Take two single-walled boxes where one fits inside the other with a few centimetres to spare. Wrap the Mac, place it in the smaller box with fill, then float that box inside the larger one on a bed of padding. Two single walls plus an air gap outperform one single wall dramatically, and most households can assemble this from what is in the garage.

The duvet trick for the outer layer - but only inside a box. Wrapping an iMac in a single duvet and taping it (yes, people do this) is not shippable. But a thin fleece blanket as the final wrap layer inside a proper box is excellent void fill and costs nothing. Padding inside rigid cardboard: fine. Padding instead of cardboard: courier refusal or worse.

Ask us. If you accept a quote and tell us you are stuck for packaging, we can advise on exactly what to source for your specific model - and since desktops are collected from your door rather than posted over a counter, you have until the collection date to get the box sorted rather than needing it before a Post Office trip. Details of the whole desktop process, from quote to collection booking, are in our guide to how to sell an iMac in the UK.

Whose problem is it if the courier drops the box?

Ours - and you should not sell a desktop to anyone who answers differently. When you sell your iMac or any desktop Mac through us, shipping is free and insured for the machine's full quoted value, the courier collects from your door, and a transit-damaged parcel is claimed on our insurance while you still get paid within 24 hours of inspection wherever the damage is clearly transit-caused and the packing was reasonable. Some buyback services bury a clause making the seller liable for damage in the post; on a £700 Mac Studio or a £450 iMac, read for that clause anywhere you sell, and walk away when you find it.

Reasonable packing is your half of that bargain, which is exactly what the steps above deliver. Photograph the machine working before you wrap it and snap the finished parcel too - sixty seconds of pictures that make any insurance conversation short and boring.

What are the mistakes that actually crack screens?

After thousands of desktop collections, the same five failures account for nearly every damaged arrival:

1. Flat-packed iMacs. Laid on their back or face, with stacked parcels riding on the glass all the way to us.
2. Single-wall boxes. They survive the van and die in the sorting depot, where parcels are stacked two metres high.
3. Empty corners. Padding across the faces but nothing at the corners - precisely where boxes land when dropped.
4. Loose accessories. A power brick pinballing around inside, gouging the case and worse.
5. Tight boxes. "It fits exactly!" means zero crumple zone; a snug fit is a bad fit.

Every one of these is free to avoid. If you are also sending a laptop in the same clear-out, note that MacBooks follow a different, lighter procedure - our separate guide on how to package and post a MacBook covers that - while everything above applies to any desktop, whether it is a 2 kg mini or a 13 kg boxed 27-inch. Pack it once, pack it properly, and the courier's job becomes the easiest part of your sale.