Shipping delicate test equipment...

I had some bad luck with a 3 box shipment (monitor, cpu and parts). The
monitor had the misfortune of having a fork lift put through the box
pretty much dead center. "ouch". The box the cpu was shipped back in
(a fairly large unit) was in the orignal factory packaging. Well, the
box showed up back at Tektronix with the corners rounded. And when they
opened the cpu box they poured out the pieces -- due to the really rough
handling, the power supply (an old linear one) had torn loose and bounced
around. The third box was just fine. It had the mouse and keyboard in
it.

Well, the Tek rep was totally pissed 'cause it was a loaner unit and
he really needed it back. He was pissed, that is, until he found out
that we'd insured the shipment for $25k. He loved us after that. (this
was back in the late 80s).

The current damage that I see is small boxes that seem to get run over
by the fedex truck. Customer calls up and says "it's smashed". The
worker dudes are sneaky. They'll usually put all the pieces in a new
box and send it on its way. But they use the old waybill, which typically
shows up the tire treads just fine. No way to protect items from that
kind of abuse.

The best advice to give to people is to always SAVE the packaging until
you've determined if it's broken or not. Also if you see obvious damage
to the boxes make the delivery dude write a report on it. Otherwise
there is no proof that THEY caused the damage. But it is tough to
get fedex/ups/whoever to pay for a poorly packed box. No matter what
THEY did to it....

The other thing is to know who fedex/ups believes to be the "SHIPPER".
Obvious you say. Not really. When you ship through a Mailboxes Etc.
or Office Depot then they are the shipper. Until such time as you need
to find out who it is -- like if you need to start a trace. Then, well,
good luck in figuring it all out. The amount of crap they make you go
through is impressive. But if you're nice to the ups/fedex folks and
don't go ballistic they will typically try and help you out (at least
that's been my experience)..

Kurt
kmahan@xmission.com

> Comments? Any one else have nasty surprises when they opened a box? I've
> had the points snapped off of probes, pins mangled on pods etc, so I am
> careful to describe recommended method of packing to sellers of equipment.
> for example - the Fluke Pods, it is IMPERITIVE that the plugs are taped
> after locked into the self test socket on the pod. Shipping tape works very
> well.
Received on Tue Apr 23 01:51:02 2002