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Post your horror stories

I think the problem is that the shipping people do their best work to smash anything you send. I bought a Commodore Plus/4 (working at getting it working, the TED gave me something at one point so at least that works), however it had no packing at all, just shoved into a flatrate box. I'm surprised it survived as the box was beat to hell but no physical damage to the Commodore.
 
I should confess, earlier in life I worked at FedEx. Boxes would be loaded onto a truck in 'wall sections'. It was standard practice to just pull down the wall of boxes and let them land where they may in the truck to get them onto the belt faster if things were falling behind...

If I were to buy a complete system with a big heavy CRT, boxes etc, I would really consider having it shipped via freight if possible.
 
Compgeke said:
I think the problem is that the shipping people do their best work to smash anything you send.
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I've encountered a situation where that was indeed the case with an airline. Someone caught it on their phone and the airline paid for everything - no questions asked.

Nevertheless I think that many people don't understand how shipping works. A shipper can't handle individual items carefully. Stuff gets shovelled, dumped, thrown, etc, in and out of trucks or other equipment. I think people need to learn to live with that concept and get out of the dream world where they think that their precious little packet is somehow treated differently. This is a bulk process. We're talking shipping - get used to it.

BTW: Has anybody seen how hard drive manufacturers package a box of drives? That's how you do it.
 
Have a pic of a hard drive manufacturers shipping? I sure wish folks were easier on shipments, I don't really understand why not at least not to the level of causing physical damage to the package. I would think that would be a monetary loss if they treat packages like that I would get my money back if I knew about it (for the cost of the shipment and/or product but that's of course the insurance scam).

I do understand a bit though as the workers are getting grilled on how many boxes can they move as quickly as possible so yeah some tossing is probably occurring but I would hope it would be mostly safe tossing if there is such a thing. I worked a very short contract stint at Dell when I was young and needing intermediate revenue while searching for a real job. I was doing any job I could (interesting experience) bouncing around the warehouse area and computer building area, and for a day or two I subbed for someone in the shipping department. Pretty crazy how fast you're expected to load stuff onto the truck and similarly insane operation unloading things in the other warehouse.
 
barythrin said:
Have a pic of a hard drive manufacturers shipping?
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hddpack.jpg

Here is the end of a box without lid. It is intended to fit inside a cardboard box. I'm almost embarrassed to explain how it works, but for the benefit of those who haven't tried it, here goes. The inside of the styrofoam provides distributed support on the HDD, and the outside provides shock absorption. I have often packed in this way using styrofoam sheets. Either 1 inch or 2 inch will work fine. You can cut it with a utility knife or razor blade. Assemble, and completely cover the outside with cheap packing tape so as to make a shell. Done properly, this will provide you with a package that you can drop kick. It can even be much simpler. I've shipped cellos across the continent, and they are many times more delicate than anything you are likely to use in a computer. :)

PS: I know that CRTs provide special challenges which can be labour intensive to overcome. Often crossing of fingers is relied upon - but there are more scientific ways.
 
Well early this summer i actually "fell prey" to a horrid ebay seller. I picked up a working 1925 metrodyne six tube radio, he cut cardboard to fit the sides, taped that up and shipped it. Somewhere along the way while being shipped, a heavy air variable capacitor came off and smashed the tubes and ruined the wire coils. I was a bit ticked off at the time.

Oh well, ive actually been redesigning and continually making it more powerful and keeping it "era apropriate", with the tech of the time. While its been fun tinkering with it, id still have prefered to have had a nice original working example of that eras tech.
 
I've been pretty lucky with regard to shipping stuff. But a good friend of mine had so much horrible luck on eBay that he refuses to even mention the place, let alone actually go there.

I was actually with him during one of the worst moments around 10 years ago. We were building a custom Macintosh computer out of a variety of unique but compatible parts, and needed a very specific motherboard for our little project. Found one on eBay, bid & won, and it came to us wrapped in sticky plastic grocery bags and damp newspaper. Surprisingly, it actually booted, but the machine was far from reliable. Often times it would play random tones from the onboard speaker and of course experienced lockups and crashes. We ended up having to find another board for it.

As I said I've been lucky for the most part, but when I ordered the parts for my current computer the box came with a fist sized hole in the bottom. If the motherboard box hadn't been jammed into that same corner, the RAM and CPU boxes would have probably fallen out. I also once had a seller ship a tiny adapter in a regular letter envelope, and the envelope was all I got, along with an adapter sized tear in the corner of said envelope.
 
I have suprisingly not had any problems with shipping companies rough housing with my items. The only thing that ever comes close to anything being broken is sellers under-cushioning items that up the likelyhood of it being broken.

There was the incident a while back of the magic smoke being let out of the PSU on my Dell System 310. I flipped the switch and heard electrical popping sounds. The fan blew a nice cloud of smoke out of the vent. It turned out not to do much damage, as the computer is still functional. It sure gave me a little spook.
 
Well I have a mix bag of horror stories, some downright rediculous.

I bought a Vintage Monopoly Board Game, the sender sends me it wrapped in brown paper. Like that would protect a fragile old box, words don not need to be mentioned here what I thought of that idiot.

Had a Tandy 1000 and a RGB Monitor both in nice condtion sent to me by courier, both in protected boxes, arrived smashed to bits, like somone kicked the box across the room a few times, it was insured and I didn't loose my money, but really? what does it require to safeguard your stuff these days in transit?

Few other minor horror stories, like my items arriving with bugs and cigarette butts.
 
gerrydoire said:
Few other minor horror stories, like my items arriving with bugs and cigarette butts.
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I once had a hard drive arrive in a box filled with pepper. Seemingly, someone had opened up ten pepper shakers and dumped the contents into the box. Nevertheless, it "spiced" things up on the computer it went into.
 
Try shipping a musical instrument, say a double-bass or a tuba. Very fragile stuff. You learn fast to fasten things securely so that nothing can move, then provide a layer of impact protection that will take the brunt of the hit. You may not be successful all of the time, but it helps a lot.
 
Well I won another Compaq Portable 386. This one has the bag to go with it so that's nice. Unfortunately the seller hasn't responded to any of my emails asking them to pack it properly and letting them know about my last experience getting one of these destroyed. Here's hoping it arrives in one piece.
 
Something nice to see for a change from an eBay seller:

"Your package has been shipped. The UPS tracking number is:
{redacted}. Care was used to package it, please use extra care
when unpacking it. Shipping was less than expected, so I've
issued a refund of $6.93. You should see that show up in PayPal."
 
...It could be the first that ever happened.

Nice to see that act of kindness. Some sellers wouldn't bother to refund a small amount like that. It goes to show that there are nice people in the world.
 
Agreed, but a few times a year I get killed by that kindness. It took me almost 20 minutes to open a package the other day due to excessive use of tape and I was very close to just sticking a knife in there and cutting (something that could cause either no damage at all, or massive damage if what I had ordered was vintage software still in box).

Some of the blame rests on me, as I never remember what I ordered.
 
Seems like quite a few people have had IBM 5153 monitors break in transit - I'm the same way. The seller of my first IBM 5150 used only packing peanuts for padding (and not much - it was a thin box, and not much bigger than the computer/monitor). There were shards of the 5153's casing all over the inside of the box, and some pretty significant damage inside as well. Thankfully, the 5150 and the keyboard came through okay.

Cheers,
Chris Hafner
 
vwestlife said:
Something nice to see for a change from an eBay seller:

"Your package has been shipped. The UPS tracking number is:
{redacted}. Care was used to package it, please use extra care
when unpacking it. Shipping was less than expected, so I've
issued a refund of $6.93. You should see that show up in PayPal."
Click to expand...

That reminded me of part of my Model 95 curse.
Four years ago I found someone who was willing to send me a PS/2 9595 for $50 + shipping. It wasn't all that special but it WAS a model 95 which I needed for special video hardware (by the way, I still am searching for one).
Anyways, I gave him a week to pull it out of starage then asked again about how it was going. It was boxed and the shipping was going to cost me $130 which was less than the previous estimate of $135 that I had already transferred to my paypal. I game him the whole $135 anyways and told him to take the extra as beer money.
Next hting I know he's refunded me everything and sent the computer off to recycling along with a note to never bother him again for "that horrible jab at beer money that won't even cover the time it took me to pull that computer out of storage".
 
I read somewhere that the USPS and UPS often do not honor their own insurance, the former through bureaucratic delays and obfuscations, and the latter by contesting damages when packing was not done by UPS/franchisees. Has anyone experienced problems with insurance claims for shipping damage?
 
Chris Hafner said:
Seems like quite a few people have had IBM 5153 monitors break in transit - I'm the same way. The seller of my first IBM 5150 used only packing peanuts for padding (and not much - it was a thin box, and not much bigger than the computer/monitor). There were shards of the 5153's casing all over the inside of the box, and some pretty significant damage inside as well. Thankfully, the 5150 and the keyboard came through okay.
Click to expand...

Those keyboards are almost more or less bulletproof :eek:, but yea; I have been in the exact same situation as you, only with a 5160 instead of the 5150.
 
Gib said:
Has anyone experienced problems with insurance claims for shipping damage?
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The only time I tried to claim insurance via the USPS, I stopped halfway through the process because it was made clear to me that in order to receive my money, I would have to surrender the damaged item. Had I continued with the process, I would have likely gotten the money without problems. The linked article has some of my thoughts about the process at that time.
 
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