Shipping Damage

[dadagoboi]

Ever ship  or receive a bass that was damaged in transit and filed a claim with the shipping company?  Which company and what was the result?

[Denis]

Not a bass but a front wheel for my 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado. Vintage Brake in California arced the new brake shoes, rebuilt the internals, etc and shipped it back back via UPS. Got it on a Friday but went out of town and didn't unpack it until Monday. UPS had dropped the package and put flat spots on the aluminum rim in three places. I called them at once and called Vintage Brake in California.

UPS came the next day and picked the wheel in the package from my house the next day and sent it back to Vintage Brake. Since Borrani, the company who made the rim, had been out of business for many years I had to call another company in California who had a nice one. They shipped it to Vintage Brake who again rebuilt the whole thing and shipped it back.

The upshot of it is that UPS took care of all of it and I didn't have to pay a dime. The bad part is that the bike was out of commission for 10 weeks overall.

[Highlander]

That's a very leading question Carlo... what's happened...?

[saltymonkey]

Not a bass but a handmade baritone uke I sold was cracked in shipping. It was packed really well. Something really heavy was on top of it and cracked the soundboard. I shipped and insured through USPS. The buyer sent it back to me and I had to provide the uke, packaging and receipts. They paid the claim but kept the damaged instrument. I wanted to keep the neck to make a cigar box tenor guitar but it was either or so I took the money.

[ack1961]

I bought a bass last year and it was shipped via UPS.
The box was so beat up upon arrival that I took a few pictures before I even opened it up.
The bass was chipped in a few spots and a dime size chunk was laying in the bottom of the gig bag.
That damage aligned perfectly with the damage on the box.

I notified the seller and forwarded the pictures.
UPS picked up the bass the next day, and within a day I had my money refunded to me.
More importantly, the seller had his claim satisfied with UPS within a week.

[dadagoboi]

That's a very leading question Carlo... what's happened...?

You hear so many horror stories I thought it might be nice to hear some good ones as well if possible.  As far as me shipping basses, so far so good using both UPS (domestic) and USPS (export).

[Grog]

My wife watched the UPS guy throw my EB-4L over his shoulder, it landed behind him on it's headstock! Surprisingly, it wasn't broken! I won a Low Impedance Bass pickup on eBay, a number of years back. It never showed up & the seller had USPS investigate. eventually, the seller sent me some photos of a mutilated bag with the pickup missing. He had sent that huge, powerful magnetic pickup in a paper mailing bag. I'm sure the first metal it came across on a conveyor belt, it attached itself to.  The seller blamed the worthless Post Office, but I think it was kinda dumb to ship it in that bag. A little box would have kept it from sticking to anything metal. 

[Lightyear]

UPS, for ground shipments most especially, uses a massive, automated sorting system to sort and process shipments.  I've seen video of this somewhere and it is truly huge and impressive.  They use bar code readers everywhere to divert boxes off of the miles of conveyors to sort shipments - the bar code is read and bang, a gate swings open and off the box goes off on a different line.  This works great until something hangs on a gate then tons of crap pile up behind the snag and stuff gets crushed or pushed off of the conveyor to ground, which could be 20 + feet below!  I've had repair parts delivered for more than 20 years via UPS and they do a damn good job but I can just about guarantee which types of packages get will get damaged.  You have to plan ahead for this kind of abuse - if things were hand sorted it would easily double or triple the cost.

[Basvarken]

I have worked with several shipping companies. And unfortunately with each of them I've had damaged goods.
I gotta say UPS has been the best of the companies so far. The lowest percentage of damage and trouble.

But still enough for me want to design a new shipping box that is 100% safe.
It is a unique concept that takes in less space so the volume weight is kept at a minimum.
I have developed it together with a cardboard factory. And at the moment I'm trying to gather an order of 500 shipping boxes to start the first run of 2000. Fender has already ordered 1500 and Gibson is also joining in with 500.

I hope to get the product over the big pond too.

[Highlander]

Can you say more or is there still pat-pend issues to sort...

Carlo... long may it remain so...