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How Not To Ship Computers
jutus writes: "I recently relocated for work from Canada to Florida, and on a suggestion, shipped my equipment (well-packed), with UPS Ground. I've posted some images of the destruction my shipment was subjected to by UPS. UPS Ground does not insure international shipments, so basically I'm up shit creek, no paddle. They have been giving me the textbook run-around for the past week. UPS Canada blames UPS in the U.S., and you can imagine who UPS down here in the States blames. As of yet, UPS has not even attempted to negotiate any compensation for my loss due to their severe negligence ... For Gods sake, use FedEX." My luck has gone the other direction -- I've mostly had good luck with UPS and some misdeliveries with FedEx. Would be nice to hear from any UPS employees reading this about what could have led to the damage jutus illustrates.
I sold a server on Ebay and had it packaged at a "Mailboxes Etc." in Manhattan and shipped UPS to Pennsylvania. The person who got it says it looked like it had been dropped from at least four feet, enough to crack the entire (metal) case. I had bought insurance, and UPS sent someone over to the guy's house to examine it. They have to make sure it was packed to spec or they blame the sender (Mailboxes Etc. in this case).
Despite their basically admitting it was damaged during shipment and that it was packed correctly, this was over two months ago and I'm still waiting for something to happen. They don't give me a point of contact so I have to start from scratch every time I call. Total mess.
I've been shipping things with UPS for the past few years, and only in the last 6 months have started noticing a large amount of damage to my stuff and to my friend's stuff. 3 of my friends had to send stuff back due to UPS damage during shipping.
Has anyone else noticed an increase in damage lately, or is it just me?
Well, not to defend UPS, but i thought i'd share my own experiences.
I shipped a number of packages via UPS ground when moving from TX to CA, among them was a computer and a few boxes full of books.
For the computer, I actually had the original box that the computer case came in, along with styrofoam padding on top and at the bottom with a sturdy cardboard box. I also made sure that all the screws were tight, all the wires were bundled up inside. Box arrived slightly banged up, but no major damage. The computer booted up on the first try with no errors. I had actually thought that some connections would have been shaken loose during transport.
However, the box full of books arrived in pieces. In fact, when the UPS man came to deliver the box, it fell apart before he made it to the door. It was the same kind of cardboard that the computer box was made of, but was significantly heavier... I didn't care much about the books since they were just textbooks.
Moral of the story? Well... use the original box if you can, don't make things too heavy or the UPS people will most likely kick the heavier boxes around, and insure things that are expensive!
My roommate works for UPS and he tells me that if they see "Fragile" on the box, they will actually kick it around in the warehouse
Why not test this to see if it is more widespread? Send a package with an audio recording device to record peoples voices and idealy with some kind of camera thing looking out to see what's going on outside the box (to get faces). Make sure the package has fragile clearly marked all over the box and send it across the country (or to re-create this poor persons experience, send it from the same place in canada to the same place in florida hoping it will take the same route). It would probably be best for the audio recording instrument to be sound activated to conserve audio recording space and to keep some sort of time stamp on the various recordings, same with the video.
Just my opinion.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
UPS is not the only company that does this. I used to work for RPS, and the amount of damage and theft of packages was outrageous. Anything that was breakable and wasnt packed to survive nuclear detonation was trashed. Workers would regularly open packages that shipped to retailers and lift articles of clothing, drop kick 'fragile' packages across the loading docks, etc. etc. etc.
However, looking at the pictures, I dont think that the computers were packed properly. If they were in the original styrofoam casings, they probably would have been fine. Bubble wrap (unless you want to wrap it a foot thick) wont cut it for computer equipment.
Anyhow, I bought an old Mac at the Goodwill for $5 and then modified it to make the funky patterns and shipped it to a friend for his birthday.
I went to Mailboxes Etc. and told them I wanted to ship it UPS. First they wanted to double box it. That alone would have cost $150, and would have substantially increased the shipping costs as well since double boxing makes things huge.
After convincing them that I had spent all of $5 and about two hours of my time on this, I conviced them that they could single-box it. However, they made me sign something that stated that it they broke it, it was my own fault.
Then while filling out the form there was a box for value. I put a sideways '8' since it was a one-of-a-kind item. They went crazy again and asked why I had done that. I replied that it was a work of electronic art that interacted with music in a unique way. That really worried them. This all occured in Palo Alto and maybe they were used to shipping strange expensive stuff.
Finally I crossed out the value and put in a big '0' and claimed that if it wasn't art then it was junk. That confused them but finally they shipped it, single boxed, for a total of about $70.
The moral of this story?
Mailboxes Etc. doesn't appreciate a smart-ass.
addendum: My friend painted it with gold paint and used it at parties. It was even more popular than his lava lamp.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Your average UPS employee is so damn busy he or she doesn't have time to play games with boxes.
What most likely destroyed this shipment was it's journey along overcrowded belts, where it was squeezed mercilessly betwixt 200 80lb. boxes of greeting cards and 80 dell or gateway boxes. When a friend of mine worked there, he said he'd wince when he'd see a wrapped gramma's xmas present nestled between industrial shipments.
UPS does home consumer shipping as a sideline: they're more worried about pleasing their corporate customers.
A few months ago, I took a tour of a shipping company that I will not name but will refer to as FooBar Inc.
The tour was at night, when shipping companies come alive and really start moving things. The tour was fun (seeing the shipping crates, all the people running around like crazy, etc) until I got to one of the sorting wharehouses. The packages to be sorted would be pulled into the wharehouse where people would go through each package and THROW it onto one of three conveyor belts. The topmost belt was about 5 feet high, the middle at about 3 and the bottom on the ground. I was totally shocked to see the the people doing the sorting THROW (not toss) printers, iMac's, monitors, tv's and other fragile equipment onto the belts. Sometimes they would miss and the package would fall to the floor, ignored until someone came around, picked it up and tossed it onto the wrong belt. Higher up in the wharehouse, where the smaller packages where sorted, the sorters would also throw the packages into the wrong chutes, toss the packages on top of the equipment or onto the floor.
Now, I'm not blaming the sorters (completely). They are payed minimum wage to do a horribly shitty and boring job. I do blame FooBar Inc for not paying these people right or not doing more checks to see how things are running.
After the tour, I never shipped anything the same way again. Recently, I've been either having a packing and shipping store do it for me. If I don't do that I pack the item in multiple boxes (usually 2 or 3) with little styrofoam peanuts between each box. It's a complete pain in the ass to pack (especially larger objects) but it seems to do the trick.
If you want something shipped right, don't ship it, take the package to the destination yourself.
Geoffeg
When I worked in radio we regularly shipped audio equipment for remotes via UPS and FedEx. Everything was always insured and marked "FRAGILE" but we also had these little "BB-in-a-paint-capsule" things we'd tape inside the crates... these were rated such that the BB would break the glass at a given G-force, so you'd know just what trauma the package had suffered in transit. Regardless, I never saw one arrive with an unbroken capsule.
How about drivers who don't care to ring your doorbell or check if you're actually home?
My first experience with this was with a $500 package that was late by two days... and then a week... and then a week-and-a-half. The tracking system said "delivery made" but there was no package. Repeated calls to the service center revealed nothing until finally one day a rep said "there's a note in the system that says 'green box' so do you have a green box around your house?"
A light bulb appeared above my head, and I went outside with a look of disbelief on my face. I found the box (containing a high-end RAID controller) at the bottom of one of my *recycle bin* at the side of the house, beneath tons of cardboard and plastic. Two more days and it would have been recycled. What sort of idiot delivers a package to a recycle bin?
Well, the second time this sort of thing happened (system says delivered, but I haven't seen the package), I *asked* the rep if there were any delivery notes in the system. This time the note was "tree" and I found a box containing a Sun 3/80 *up in the branches of my 14' pine tree* in the dead of winter. The driver actually seemed to have climbed the fence next to the tree to place the box in it. They're sturdy branches, but it still seems ridiculous to me.
Calls to UPS about these incidents resulted in the following explanation: sometimes when the individual isn't home and the address is difficult to reach, the driver may leave the package on the premesis in a "non-obvious" area so that he doesn't have to return. I guess a recycle bin and a tree are UPS's idea of protecting me from thieves... Of course all of this ignores the fact that I was home all day on the day that BOTH of these deliveries were supposedly made...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Mod parent up, my Dad did 6 months at UPS and this is exactly what he described. As a side note he felt it was all the unions fault, they had managed to jack up the pay rate and as a result management used those stop watches to try and get their moneys worth from the overpaid workers (not sure if this is still the case now, but it was in '73)
I currently work for UPS, and the sad truth is that we cannot fuck up a parcel that is properly packed. My hub alone ships thousands of Dell and Gateway pieces a day, and I myself personally see several hundred in one 4 hour sort. Both the Dell and Gateway boxes are made of sterner stuff than your average moving box, and both have sturdy moulded styrofoam packing, not peanuts. Bubble wrap will not save something as heavy as a cpu or monitor. I have seen a Dell monitor box fall three stories without suffering so much as a dented edge. I have seen my coworkers jumping up and down on a Gateway box with the deliberate intention of destroying it, but only leave dirty footprints. I have also seen what happens to boxes when the contents are poorly packed. UPSers are overworked, and underpaid, and they're Union. Management walks all over them, despite Jimmy Hoffa Jr.'s best efforts to curb them. Moral of the story, pack well, INSURE EVERYTHING, and never buy Gateway. Dells are ok. (Ok, so I'm biased...)
Society doesn't turn on a dime, but if enough people lean on the steering wheel long enough, it can negotiate a curve.
Surprise, when I recieved the package at home, it had been bent. The mounting cardbord had been totally destroyed. Fortunately, I was able to remount it at the place I got it framed, though there is a permanent crease in the piece towards the top that is noticable in bright lighting, if you know what you are looking for.
This kind of peeves me to this day, since there are only two copies of this in existance. The artist has the other one.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I worked for UPS in West Michigan for about a year [1999-2000]. One of my jobs was to unload a semi full of IBM desktops, thinkpads, NEC monitors, and HP printers and scanners [some other computer items] every night. This ment hundreds of desktops went through my hands in the matter of 1 hour or less [my shift was only 4 hours]. Although they were not handled with kid gloves, I never saw one that ended up like that. Trust me when I tell you that if that had come through our site we would've heard about it from our managers.
However, I have seen pacakages this bad or worse. It happens. The logistics of moving insane amounts of packages in short periods of time mean that problems are bound to arise. Plus there is a serious human factor involved. Tired, hurried, inexperienced, or lazy workers can cause this sort of thing. Also managers directly effect the quality of the work being done. UPS has the training to properly handle packages out there, but like anywhere, it's up to the workers and managers to implement.
I can't say much about claims, other than that they tell us the amounts that they pay out every year and its hefty.
As to what could've led to this, any number of things. A bad wall [imagine a giant game of tetris in a semi] could have done it, a jam in a chute, it could've gotten caught on the belt, or even a mad worker [it happens, fast food workers spit in your burger too]. Another possiblity is that heavy packages [over 70#s] were sent too early on the belt and crushed the pachages. Heavy packages are saved until the end of the night to try and prevent this.
One last thing November and December are the times of the year to be extra careful about packaging and the like. The numbers of packages that are handled during these times of the year increase significantly.
weso
"I like my sugar with coffee and cream." - Beastie Boys
I used to do that type of thing too, although I used old TVs. I started with black and white, and migrated to color later. ;-)
I used a separate amplifier to drive the deflection coils in the TV. Having a separate amp both isolated it from my stereo, and allowed adjustment of the level, balance and tone controls for best display, independant of the stereo volume level. I used an AGC circuit to compress the audio levels slightly so that when the audio level was adjusted to give nice patterns at high levels, the quieter passages didn't collapse to an indistinguishable dot.
Color was the best addition. Through a separate board, I split the audio into low (below 300Hz), mid (300 to ~4KHz) and high (above 4KHz) bands. I ran each of the three signals through an attenuator and hacked them into the red, green, and blue low level video inputs respectively. I was doing this this way back before computers were fast enough (Pre IBM PC days) when TVs were made with mostly discrete components, and that you could easily get to the individual circuits to make the necessary modifications. Computers got fast enough to do the same type thing in software about the time the Pentium 100's came out. Today, with Gigahertz processors and fast video cards, it could make for a nice OpenGL project.
Later.
wings
This comes from an extensive history of long distance computer shipments... Boston to LA, LA to Jacksonville, Jax to Seattle, Seattle to NYC, etc.
:
1. Use the MFG's original boxes if you saved them. If not,
2. Do not use loose fill (otherwise known as peanuts) to pack your equipment, neither FedEx not UPS will pay on claims where this was used (been burned twice).
3. Double Box! This is a necessity. It may seem stupid, but if you double box almost any claim will go through without question. (You can use loose fill in between the boxes).
4. Take photos BEFORE and take photos AFTER (preferably upon delivery, with the driver or truck in the picture, snap with him walking away if you need to).
5. If the box is damaged, have the driver (deliverer) note this. Make sure he/she does.
6. If you ordered something from a store and the box is damaged, just refuse it.
7. Pray.
Now remember, FedEx is NOT a box shipper. They like to deliver letters (big money, small hassle), and thus I have had MUCH better luck with UPS. But here it's trying to choose the lesser of two evils.
Hope this helps someone. I've lost way too many computers in shipping.
On a side note, in college I shipped a 'cinder block' from Boston to Pittsburgh. UPS broke it. No joke.