A year of grading disputes
We logged every disagreement about a grade for a year — ours against customers, and graders against each other. The customer was right more often than we would have guessed, and the pattern was consistent.
- Sheet
- 94
- Revision
- 2026-10
- Scale
- 1:1
- Drawn at
- Peoria IL
Our grade warranty is one sentence: if a container arrives below the grade we sold, we replace it or refund it. That is easy to write and it only means something if you keep score honestly.
Sixty-three disputes across roughly 38,700 containers handled. That is a rate low enough to be proud of and a sample big enough to learn from, so we tagged each one by which of the eighteen checks was at issue and who turned out to be right after we looked at the intake photographs.
| Check at issue | Disputes | Customer right | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residue staining severity | 14 | 9 | Our wording was vague. 'Stained' covers too much ground |
| Odour after rinse | 11 | 6 | Genuinely subjective. Two graders can disagree in good faith |
| Bottle clarity | 9 | 3 | Mostly photo lighting, which we fixed |
| Cage geometry | 7 | 2 | Measurable, so rarely contested successfully |
| Valve function | 6 | 1 | Usually damage in transit, not at grading |
| UN marking legibility | 6 | 4 | Our photos were too low-resolution early in the year |
| Pallet soundness | 5 | 0 | Photographed from below since 2023; no contest |
| Everything else | 5 | 1 | Scattered |
Forty-one percent
The customer was right in 26 of 63 cases. Every one of those was replaced or refunded, and in nineteen of them the root cause was our description rather than our grading — the container was exactly what the grader thought it was, and the words we used to sell it implied something better.
The three fixes
Staining got a scale
'Stained' became four defined levels with reference photographs, published in the grading standard. Disputes on this check dropped by two thirds in the following quarter.
Odour got a second opinion
Any container where odour is the deciding factor now gets two graders. It costs ninety seconds and it removes the most subjective call in the process.
Photographs got better
Fixed lighting on the intake pad, higher resolution on UN plates, and a fifth angle straight down into the sump. Three of the eight dispute categories essentially disappeared.
The second fix is the one we almost did not make, because it adds labour to every ambiguous container. It turned out to be the cheapest of the three, because a disputed load costs a replacement plus freight plus a customer who now checks everything.
What we would tell any buyer
- Ask for photographs of the specific containers, not of the grade. Any seller who will not send them is telling you something.
- Ask what the grade definition says about staining, specifically. It is the check that causes the most disagreement in this industry.
- Ask what happens if the load arrives below grade — and whether you need to produce an inspection report to claim it.
- Photograph the load on arrival before it is unstrapped. It protects you and it protects us, and twice last year it proved the damage happened in transit.
- Tell the seller what the containers are for. Half of all grade disputes are really application mismatches wearing a costume.
Read the standard before you buy
Eighteen checks, four bands, three outcomes, published in full — including the staining scale this year's disputes forced us to write.