Shipping Damage...

[Prime mova]

I recently received a M25 w/damage due to being packed extremely poorly. I asked the seller twice to pack it so it wouldn't get damaged plus even suggesting packing materials.

I'll post pics later but it's had an impacted on the gold fins top right & all along the right side the sharp corner of the fins have been hit leaving dents.

Have other members had similar happen to them & is there a way to repair this type of damage.

[Kirghiz]

Was it shipped with insurance?

[groundpounder]

Yes. Verry frustraiting indeed. And this did happen to me recently, with a nice MS-275. It was packed verry poorly and did have insurance. While the lady at the poast office and the one who shipped had different opinions on how the insurance claim should be handled, time ran out on fileing a claim and I ate the amp. Nice amp with a big dent in the corner of the heatsink.

[Starunit10]

I had the same experience with a bandit. It was an international shipment, so both postal services wanted each other to pay and eventually...................no one did.........but me!

[Prime mova]

I'm a PG fan & I got a real buzz out of picking this M25 up for $48 shipped. I'm pissed that I asked the guy & mentioned twice the type of packing materials that he should use but, I'm sure that as soon as he got my money he stopped caring about anything to do with the packaging. I'll just have to tidy the amp up the best that I can, just a shame to see such a precious M series treated this way.

[groundpounder]

Yes. It is sad to to see a 20 year old amp that has been taken care of so well, just to be damaged durring shipping.

[ttocs]

I think the mistake made is that often people hurry up and rush the packing and just assume/hope it gets handled well. In reality the modern automation systems that move them between connections can be rougher then any person would ever consider being. The boxes are ran down conveyer belts and knocked off into bins that are then picked up and taken to different areas. If the bin is empty when it get knocked off it might end up taking a 6-8ft fall. Then if the 2nd box to come into the bin is a small box of encyclopedias weighing 40lbs that then takes the same drop, on top of your box and of course then every box after that piles on top crushing it. If you pack the box and you don't feel comfortable dropping it 6-8 ft then you have not done a good enough job. I send stuff regularly to jeorg in austrialia and as far as I know I have never had a problem. I will often double pack them and I tend to keep/hord packing supplies just to be sure I am ready. Other things that are good to do for PG amps is to remove the mounting screws for the speaker/power connections on the M-class amps so that if they get hit they do not snap off(another common problem).

Anyone else have any other packing hints that we can share to try and keep this from happening? Maybe it would be good to post some pics of previous problems and explanations of what happened/how to stop it so that in the future we could just direct people to the link to give them all the advice they would need?

[ajaye]

As someone who worked in shipping for 15 years, including handling US Mail, I pack the F&%# out of everything I sell and ship, to the point where people have called me laughing to express their appreciation. ttocs hit the nail on the head, though there are some parts of the process that are still done by human hands too. We called those jobs, literally, "throwing the mail."

What I used to do is have a bunch of phone books, because who the hell uses a phone book anymore? You can usually find stacks of them in the lobby of any apartment building for the taking. I would wrap everything in bubble wrap, then fill bottom of the box then the gaps between everything with a combination of packing peanuts, tons of crumpled up phone book pages, and if there was a lot of room, bunched up plastic that I usually had tons of hanging in my closet from my dry cleaning. They key is you can't just put stuff in the box and package over it you have to make sure its suspended with packaging materials under it because when the label is on the top of the box, 75% of the shock from being moved/tossed/chucked/dropped is gonna come from the bottom. That and I use a sh*t-ton of tape so it doesn't bust open in transit, which is likely if the box gets wet at all. Set aside a good 15 minutes for opening if you ever buy something from me.

I just got a Tantrum from ebay today that came in a box just big enough for it with a single piece of bubble wrap that didn't even wrap around the bottom. There's a few nicks that weren't there in the pics but as long as it works I'll live with it for the price.

[groundpounder]

I think double boxed is also a must with heavy electronics. But unfortunatly, it is when someone ships you something and they they think they have done a good job packing no mater what someone has advised.

[ttocs]

Who was it on here that built that epic crate from hell for the international shipping of a ms1000 I think it was?

[Prime mova]

I asked the seller twice to pack it so it wouldn't get damaged plus even suggesting packing materials.

I'll post pics later but it's had an impacted on the gold fins top right & all along the right side the sharp corner of the fins have been hit leaving dents.

Have other members had similar happen to them & is there a way to repair this type of damage.

[Eric D]

I built a crate once for a MS amp shipped to Europe. The crate weighed as much as the amp did, but it held it securely, and I designed it with the the goal that if the amp took a fall on one end, all the force would be sent into the heatsink, not into the plastic terminals.

[Nils]

mhyde built a crate to me when he shipped me a couple of MPS2500 Boards, all the way to Norway in one piece