Packed very well and arrived without any scratches or dents. Have had this on my front porch for a little less than a year and it is starting to rust nicely. If it had more exposure to the elements it would have rusted far more by now. Not a deal breaker, but there are a couple  design flaws. There is a solid metal "foot" that runs the perimeter of the base that doesn't let any of the water draining through the drainage hole escape from under the planter. This is not an issue if you place on a porous surface, but since it is on my wood porch I had to buy pot risers to let the water drain properly. The second issue is that the interior cavity runs the full height of the planter. There is no need for this and unless you fill most of it with something much lighter, filling the whole thing with soil would make it so unnecessarily heavy. I used the copious amount of packing styrofoam from the box to fill in the bottom 2/3.