Star Wars in Australia - Chris Loggans TOP TRADER!!!!!

Gang,

You may remember a bit of whinging done by me back in December about the
complete lack of vector games in Australia - particularly color vectors
where after two years of searching I have not been able to find one.

There are only 4 KNOWN color vectors in Australia - if there are more - we
have not been able to find them.

It was also hard to buy one from you guys as when it became available for
sale - it would then take a couple of weeks to source transport and quotes
and stuff like that - by which time most people wanted it out for space or
cash.

Following the mail I had a tremendous response from a lot of you willing to
sell me a color vector and wait for me to arrange the shipping - thank you
all!!!

I finally settled on an offer of an upright Star Wars from Chris Loggans.

In Australia, Leisure and Allied only brought in a couple of uprights and
they are long gone. I only ever saw one. They prefered to make the cockpits
locally - and so that is what Australia got. Well, there was no way I could
do another cockpit (Sinistar and STUN Runner are heavy enough) and so the
upright was most attractive.

DHL came in with a reasonable price on shipping (most other companies
wouldn't even deal with me unless I was an account customer), and so the
deal with Chris was struck.

Chris also managed to find a boardset with Clay's multigame on it - thanks
so much Clay!!! We never saw Empire in Australia - by the time it came out
most vectors were trashed by Ops!!!!!!! (Now - about that Asteroids
multigame....)

When the machine was finally ready to ship I rang back DHL to confirm the
price and mysteriously the shipping price had doubled!!!! Turned out that
Australia and the USA have different rates and processes. To get the cheaper
rate it had to be booked and paid for in the USA.

Finally Chris was able to ship it, and then when at the DHL Service Centre
found that shipping would be an extra $600 due to the crate - paid that
money in trust on his CC, and waited patiently for me to get the money
together to send him. Thanks again Chris.

When it finally got to Sydney it sat in customs for 10 days while DHL looked
for a second parcel that was scanned onto my airbill number - even though I
rang them several times and explained there was only one thing - the crate.

Finally it cleared customs yesterday and DHL couldn't deliver it - they
assumed that if you import something that size - you would be in the frieght
business and would own a forklift to get it off the truck.

I assumed that if you were in the freight business you would have a lift
tail truck to be able to deliver to people who did not have a forklift.

After complaining that I did not condsider the fact they couldn't get it off
the truck to be door to door service, they finally agreed to deliver it and
have the driver wait while we dismantled the crate and moved the machine off
the truck by hand.

And that's just about it - a couple of jumpers on the power plug and away it
went. There was much celebrating - so much so I shouldn't have driven to
work this morning as I am so hung over!!!!

A public thanks to Chris for going through all this. It's great that another
collector would go the extra mile when he could have just sold it locally
and be over and done with it in a day!!!!

So Australia now has 5 known working color vectors!!!!!!

One interesting thing came out of it - the DHL shipping girl questioned why
the crate, which I explained was to protect the machine. She reckons that I
could have save about $500 by using a palette cut to size and cardboard all
around - this is how most arcade machines are imported - just like fridges.

I told her I was worried about damage and she said that was why I paid
insurance. She went away and checked some stuff and rang back in the
afternoon and told me that if I wanted to ship that way in the future
(palette and cardboard) I can be safe in the knowledge that they have never
had an insurance claim lodged on any amusement machine that have imported.

Thanks all
MacMan

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Received on Wed Mar 1 17:24:06 2000