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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.
If you can read you would notice:
"UPS Ground does not insure international shipments"
To translate, that mean he couldn't insure it with UPS.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I've always found it a bit "funny" that you have to pay an extra fee to make sure they don't break the items you're shipping.
You probably shouldn't have requested delivery by "International Trebuchet"
Now you know.
You made a couple of mistakes...
Sorry for your loss, but, yes you are up shit creek!
Does your house or renters insurance have any provision to cover moving related problems.
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?
i don't know how most feel about this, but i wouldn't find getting all my stuff destroyed funny, and i know there is a long tradition of laughing at other people's misfortune, but come on, thats a horror story.
The only safe way is to move it yourself from Canada to the US! There is no way to inusre that who ever handles your stuff will even be able to speak English--or will even care if they do. Just rent a UHaul and take it yourself next time.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Why this falls under the 'Humor' icon, I can't figure out.
:( icon for such things.
You need a
A video of this guy giving the local UPS delivery person a DDT would have been funny, but not a destroyed computer.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
How long does the claim process take?
.. Darn misleading FAQs anyways ..
Once the claim paperwork is received by UPS, a check is typically issued and mailed to the shipper of record within five business days.
link
I assume its been more than five days?
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!
According to the UPS web site, international shipments are automatically insured for $100, and if you want more, you have to declare the shipment's value and pay an additional premium. This matches my experience shipping within the US (I recently shipped a PC to a friend and of course I bought the additional insurance).
So when you say that UPS doesn't insure, what you mean is that you neglected to ask for or buy insurance. Did you assume that you shipment was insured, or did you just forget to ask?
I'm sorry that your PC got busted up, dude, but face it: you screwed up.
--Jim
I recently bought an SGI Indy off of eBay, and the seller shipped it US Postal Service Priority Shipping. It was *cheap* and arrived in a mere 2 days!! I highly suggest USPS Priority Shipping if the product is packed well with packing peanuts and such. They really have a good service.
---------
Fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck yous to: Rob "Taco-Snotter" Malda, Homos, Kowboi Kneel, and RMS.
RTFA
His PowerTower Pro, in a standard AT-style PC case, was also damaged quite severely.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Step one in using shipping companies: don't buy extra insurance for expensive shit.
Dude, if it was so important, how come you didn't spend $5 or even $50 for insurance on the shit?
Not sure how it works in Canada, but you might say in the US that giving the package gave them a bailment. They have to take care of your shit. Now, it would be expected that you might have some dings on your boxen, and some other problems. But showing the condition of your stuff should prove more than exceptional incompetance. So, even if they denied the bailment, you could show that the damage was so agregious that it should have been forseeable.
At this point, I think the real question is: what is the condition of the drives? This might be your only recourse at this point.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
First they tried to say I packed it incorrectly, until I explained that one of their representatives did it.
Then they tried to say that since I built the computer myself, they couldn't reimburse me because they couldn't tell how much it cost, and that it might have been that I put it together wrong that broke it.
I eventually got back ~66% of what was broken. I hate UPS with a passion. This was right before the strike, and I suspected at the time that it was broken by disgrunted employees wanting to punish the company by making them pay insurance claims on something clearly marked "fragile" and "electonic equipment", but evidently its just poor employees.
As an FYI, the Mailboxes, etc where I got it packed was pretty annoyed with UPS and well, and helped me w/ the claims process.
Or someone just put it under something heavy while loading it on a truck, and said truck went for a long drive over bumpy roads from city A to city B. No malice need be required...though this is an object lesson in why shippers of fragile stuff should supply their own armor (packing peanuts, or wood crates as the image page suggests).
I thought on packages going ground they stated that they must be packed to withstand multiple 10 foot drops. I'm almost sure that's the policy.
. ht ml
I don't see anything about it on their terms page though:
http://www.ups.com/using/services/details/terms
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I've had decent luck sending things in the origional packaging (So they can't gripe about the packaging) and sending it the first level above UPS ground.
And you have to watch your insurance carefully. Often times, they insure everything BUT electronics.
Gentoo Sucks
..
Its obvious, you need to sue.
Talk to a lawyer, sue both UPS Canada, and ups USA.
this is, at the very least, negligence. waiver or no, companies are always liable for negligence.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why did you ship several thousand dollars of delicte equipment uninsured? That's kinda asking for it isn't it?
If they won't insure the shipment you should probably assume that there is a reason for that.
You knowingly sent it without insurance, correct?. Was fed ex too expensive? Airborne Express? I guess I'm just wondering if you are paying the price for the cheap way out?
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
I saw your pictures and I must say that's a real bang up job. However, you should note that it's rather foolish to ship a tower in the size box you shipped it in.
If you absolutly need to ship PC parts, disassemble them and ship them in containers with lots of foam, packing "popcorn", etc. Even empty ATX cases arrive in boxes two and three times their actual size.
I'm not defending UPS nor am I saying they are at fault. The processes involved in sorting boxes often include large belts and ramps, and yes, two and three feet drops. The belts that load boxes onto FedEx planes often have five foot drops at the top. And this is FedEx.
This is why you need insurance, and you need to be wise about packaging your goods. I sure hope you didn't pack all the things pictured in a 4 cu foot box you showed that was beat to death (probably from stuff rolling around inside of it).
I would go the route of getting moeny from UPS if you insured it. Other than that you're screwed.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Actually, I myself have just had an older model (new in box) big Apple ColorSync monitor shipped to me via UPS and they got that one as well. Major damage to the monitor case was done in shipping, but it appears to work fine. At any rate, I contacted them and it took a couple of weeks but they tell me they are sending me a check. (The monitor was insured). What I don't get is that if a box is dropped off at your address with the outer shipping container beat to hell, why is there no notice left with the package that damage had occurred in shipping? That would be the honest thing to do.
In general, I too use FedEx, but chose UPS this time for who knows what reasons. I guess I will be going back to Fed Ex.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Always pronounce it "OOOPS!"
UPS put my business out of business by their inept delivery service.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Did you not notice the damage to the "hardened" PC cases as well? The bottom of the box he called his BSD router was bent. The cards inside were knocked out of their mountings. Memory was dislodged from its slots. If anything, the PC cases took a worse beating than the "cutesy" G4.
UPS has no regard for their customers. They supposedly have a strict policy forbidding drivers to leave packages outside your front door. When asked why their drivers do not pay attention to that policy, the management had this to say, "We cannot be responsible for the conduct of our drivers." Seriously, UPS, get a grip. What's worse is that drivers leave boxes at your door with no signature where anyone can steal them when the package has a big sticker that says in big bold letters "Signature Required." Sheesh. FedEx is at least marginally better, though not without their own set of shortcomings.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Not surprising at all. I have several clients in the mail order business (they ship between 20-100 pkgs per day) and they all say the same thing- FedEx isn't perfect, but they are *far* better than UPS. Last spring I ordered four wheels/tires from TireRack.com. UPS delivered three. That's right, a person at UPS saw four of the same thing coming through and decided that only three really needed to get there. That was the last time I used UPS. YMMV, but I doubt it. So pack your gear well, insure it(!) appropriately and don't use UPS. -LM
dude, this rocks. Funny thing is, I was going to post a followup and talk about UPS losing my laptop INSIDE their distribution facility. No, not in transit. The package got into the building but never left. 3 weeks later, no one at UPS could tell me where my laptop went. They knew from the scan data that it was in the building, but no one could find it. Lesson learned, ship USPS or FedEx.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I agree with you. I would move my computer stuff myself, or at the minimum have someone I know and trust move it for me. I am a computer junkee. I wouldn't be able to survive without my computer.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Born Slippy by UNderworld - 12" vinyl, they shipped it to me using UPS in a Padded envelope with a Big sticker saying 'Do Not Fold'
Vinyl may be fragil but it must've taken a fair amount of force to Produce the neatly folded package I recived, I was amazed at how symmetric the fold was as well.
Needless to say amazon have used Boxes ever since.
...that he couldnt insure due to international shipping?!?!?!
I saw your images (faster than a speeding /. effect, whoo). I don't mean to sound cruel, but that wasn't "well-packed".
Every so often I get Sun hardware shipped to me. I have learned a few things:
Basically, if you aren't use molded solid foam, you're in trouble. At minimum you should use foam blocks for the sides of the box, and then fill the gaps inside with stuffed eggshell foam (e.g., you don't have custom-molded foam, e.g., you threw out the foam pieces that the computer/case was originally shipped in).
The other day I got a hardware board about the size of my hand. It was shipped in a box the size of my torso. The outside of the box had gone through a war zone, but thanks to all that foam, the card was pristine.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I shipped a trunk via UPS a couple of years ago, full of assorted stuff, including a (very well padded) TV. When it arrived at the other end, there was a hole nearly large enough for me to put my hand through in the back of the trunk. This is quite a sturdy wooden trunk we're talking about here. They must have rammed it with a forklift or something. The TV inside, was, of course broken. They paid for the TV, but they insisted they wouldn't pay for the trunk itself, because the insurance didn't cover the "shipping vessel".
I also know of at least two cases of them breaking computers in transit. In one case, they banged a machine around so much that the heatsink detached and bounced around the case, knocking stuff off the logicboard.
A friend of mine ordered a computer that was delivered via UPS. They showed up when he wasn't home, and left the box sitting outside his house. It ended up getting rained on.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I was waiting for a flight at DC National airport watching the planes go in and out from the observation area. A 747 with "UPS" on the side pulled in nearby, and the cargo bay door (which was about 15 feet off the ground) opened. Before long, large boxes came flying out of the cargo bay, falling at least 10-15 feet down to the shuttle. Some of them bounced, some didn't. They unloaded the whole cargo this way as I watched.
My last move I said "fuck it" and shipped it all regular mail.
I sent a computer (system unit only) across the country using the postal service, in original packing, and it arrived just fine -- cost around $15 from Ontario to Alberta. The only problem (according to the recipient) was that there was nobody home on delivery, so the posties left it on the front porch, fully exposed to the elements, wildlife, and unsavoury characters.
Now, I don't think I'd consign a brand new machine to the postal service, but it worked well for me ...
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I done extensive personal shipping with UPS because of relocating to different parts of the US these last few years. As far as computer equipment, I've had a hard drive not work after shipping (though no other noticable to that system) and a case that acquired a significant dent (easily repaired with a hammer). Plastic containers and few other incidentals have been damaged over the years, but nothing as bad as what happened to him.
My biggest complaint with UPS is that they seem to change their packing requirements every 3 months. More than once I've prepared things for shipping using recommended guidelines from a previous visit and found them no longer acceptable. After writing their corporate office to complain that requirements were inconsistant and not well publicized, they were actually quite friendly about it. Of course, I wasn't complaining about damages at the time.
Last time I checked with UPS, over half the people there said that lower parts of Canada didn't count as a foreign country.
Wonder when that changed...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I know the grief. I was able to finance the purchase of my laptop because I shipped my desktop (P200MMX back then) and put $2000.00 insurance on it. When my box arrived the hard drives tumbled out of my case and I was like "Oh, my God..."
My housemate recently shipped a downhilling mountain bike from Wyoming, with insurance on it. When the bike arrived they had bashed in what everyone thought were bomb-proof front shocks and bent the rotors on the disc brakes. The typical insurance run-around that they use in *both* cases here are:
- "Oh, it's not our fault, you packaged it incorrectly".
- "Oh, the item was damaged before we shipped it"
- "We'll conduct our own evaluations and keep you informed"
So, this is what you should do, and in my experience works quite well:
* Keep all receipts of the packaging.
* Have it shipped from an authorized shipping outlet, *and* have them sign a letter saying that they packaged it.
* Photo document the packaging if possible.
And when they give you shit about it being not packaged properly, show them but do not hand over the documentation. And if they still give you crap, this is what my housemate did:
* Have a lawyer, lawyer friend, etc, write a letter to UPS, threatening to supeona the records that they have on your package, and the insurance claim paperwork and the inspection results.
Boy did they pay up quick after that. They weren't going to even take a second look at his bike, the lawyer did his thing, and now he's at least getting his disc rotors replaced.
- SK
is a better word to put on the box, or dirty old rags, chunks of wood, pots and pans.
One way to guarantee tender treatment would be to mark the box "nitroglycerin", but that may cause you some other problems.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
I live in Memphis and have friends who lift boxes for FedEx (which is based in Memphis). Most of the people working there do something else during the day (school, second job, whatever) and work FedEx at night. Just think about it. You're making little money lifting boxes. You boss gets pissed at you for being too slow. So you speed things up a little bit and occasionally punt a box or two when no one's looking to keep up the pace and relieve the aggression.
My general rule is never ship anything you can't replace and always get insurance. So in the case of a computer, make sure you have nice backups of everything. That way in case it gets killed, they'll replace the machine and you can replace the data. And if it's an old machine, maybe it'll be a good reason to get a new one!
I shipped a large networking chassis to a guy in Germany (from me in Kansas). The chassis was a Cabletron 6C105 and was filled with blades. The total weight was around 80lbs. It was about 3' tall by 2' wide and 1.5' deep, roughly. I managed to acquire one of the boxes that Cabletron ships those units in. It was heavy packing corners to slip over the unit's edges for support and to completely fill the space from end to end, side to side. I wrapped the chassis in small bubblewrap and stuck on the corners. Then I put it in the box on it's back, access to the cards on top. The corners gave it 3" or so of space all the way around it except for the corners where it was nice and tight. In those gaps I crammed packing peanuts. Literally. I would shove handfuls of peanuts in the bottom void, crushing some until I could force any more in there. Then I filled the sides and packed them down as tight as I could. You couldn't have put another peanut down those sides. It was tight. the box was actually bulging a bit. On the top I placed some large foam pads that were about 2" thick. I then closed the lids, packing peanuts in as tight as I could under it. I then taped it shut. I used an excessive amount of tape of course and didn't just use small pieces to cover the edges. I wrapped the thing in tape almost. It was one tightly packed box. Hell they might have been able to air drop the thing to deliver it! :-) The guy was satisfied with the shipment and I got my $$. The moral of the story is you can't pack something too tight. If you'd had a strong structure under the cardboard surface to support the weight, less damage would have occured. I imagine you packed the box the same way my 9600 was packaged. Better luck next time.
In the surplus-electronics business, it's almost an industry axiom. UPS Blue (2-day air) is fine, and FedEx 3-day Express Saver service is a good compromise between cost and delivery time. UPS Ground, however, guarantees that your equipment will receive the most abusive possible treatment at the hands of heavily-unionized goons who have zero accountability to management.
In fact, you're lucky if your shipment doesn't magically vanish from the distribution hub.
I usually use FedEx when it absolutely, positively, has to get there in one piece. That being said, I have not been hearing good things about the new FedEx Ground (formerly RPS) service. Apparently the integration with FedEx has not gone particularly well, and they're not providing reliable service with low breakage risk.
Before using any carrier or service, it's a good idea to search Google Groups to see what the various collectibles groups are bitching about lately. And always, always pack your gear to survive a 3-foot fall into a concrete floor. If you catch yourself flinching at the thought of such an impact, you didn't pack well enough.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
My partner used to do onsite shipping/receiving for an environmental lab, handling samples which were often liquid and frequently hazardous, and which have mandated hold times. She told me the lab's policy was to use nothing but Fedex for outgoing and prepaid Fedex for incoming, because not only were damaged/lost samples a common occurrence, (despite being shipped in sealed coolers the size of a piano bench) but also UPS' internal tracking was terrible and their on-time delivery guarantee was worth less than the paper it was written on. It was cheaper to prepay Fedex to deliver incoming samples than to call the client, explain that the hold time had expired while the sample was mistakenly sent to Texas instead of Oregon, and ask for them to resample and resend. That was in 1996-1998 inclusive.
That being said, if it is that valuable, from that far a distance, then the added expense of wooden crates with lots of extra padding inside may be worth it.
Although it almost looks like it got dropped from a severe height, like inside a shipping container from about 5 + yards/meters of the ground, and got slightly crushed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I worked at UPS for a year and a half, on the early-morning 'Preload' shift.
Our facility was horrificly out of date: probably one of the oldest in the country.
We destroyed packages constantly. Employees are not supposed to throw packages, but they are expected to work so fast that it is impossible to do your job without tossing the odd box.
Also, the system of conveyer belts and the giant 'carousel' that sorters use to move boxes from their 'feeder trucks' (the trailers that move about the country) through sort to the delivery 'package cars' routinely mangle boxes.
Chances are, it wasn't anyone's fault per se. UPS facilites are always busy, but during the months of november and december, volume rises enormously. The machinery just can't take it.
Also: did your computer box have those little punch-in handles? Workers can't resist grabbing the boxes by those, and inevitably they rip right out the side. Blame that on the computer shippers themselves, for providing handles that just can't handle it.
Plus, anyone sending a package by ground should understand that if it's on the bottom, up to 7 or 8 packages weighing up to 70 pounds each, may be stacked on top of your box. Or, if it gets put on top, it may fall as much as 5 feet, onto a metal or concrete surface. If you're not comfortable dropping your box from head hight, it's not packaged well enough! There should be NO empty space inside the box, which allows things to move around (violently) and allows the box to crush in one place. You should not bother with styrofoam peanuts, because they allow the contents to settle and therefore be exposed to shock from a blow to the bottom of the package. I like to use tightly-wadded-up newspaper. Also keep in mind your package may be exposed to rain at some point: wrap the items in plastic first, then put them in the box with newspaper wads filling all space left, on all sides (including the bottom) of the item. Then use packaging tape (not masking tape, not string, not duct tape) and wrap the crap out of it. Cover every seam with tape. Make at least one strip of tape go all the way around the enitre box, parallel to each axis. If you don't follow these directions, you're fooling yourself about whose fault it is when your items show up in lots of little tiny bits.
When I was at UPS in 1995 and 96, I once heard from a supervisor that after payroll, the single highest cost for every UPS facility is paying off the insurance claims on packages. In other words, they spend more paying the $100 on packages we destroyed, then they do buying things like trucks, or maintaining the facilities themselves, etc. Don't know if that is true, but the point is, it would actually cost more for them to break fewer boxes, then it does for them to pay the insurance.
Don't know why your international shipment wasn't insured. You could have insured it, just not for free...
And, I knew people at FedEx. They are absolutely just as bad: they have the same problems as UPS, but they handle fewer large packages and therefore their equipment is optimized for small things. If you're sending a big box, way better off with UPS than FedEX, in my opinion.
-Leperflesh
I am allowed to criticize you: you are not allowed to criticize me. Sorry, that's just how things are.
United parcel smashing screwed me twice (why did I trust them again? it was 2 years later and I didn't remember that it happened before, I thought it was another carrrier that did it to me).
Get this: Got a relative that sent me a cassiopeia thru ups for me to play around with, he wrote "gift not for resale" on the duties declaration, basically, it was already payed and taxed and all... he wasn't getting cash from me for it, there's supposed to be a free trade between canada and US anyways, especially for the computer stuff...
Thing is, guess what stupid surprise I got? he insured it for 200$ in case something would happen, I got TAXED on the 200$US (provencial and federal tax, a nice total of 15%) so that costed me a nice extra 30$, plus another 30$ for duties.... basically I had to pay over 90$ canadian to get the unit or else it would be returned. Thing is I didn't answer the door, I was at work, my girlfriend payed them because she knew I was expecting it (and beside my relative would have lost his shipping $$), they didn't give me any receipt (aside from a 2cmx10cm note that was attached to the box) and GOD was I pissed. I've phoned them explaining the situation, they said that gifts thing works for value under 60$, for christ sake, the tax thing, I can understand, to some extent, but 15% of DUTY tax?? no that's called stealing, that's total abuse, and while they may increase they profit margin with that, they'll lose just about EVERY small customers they could get (and sometimes small customers like me have power to chose which carrrier to use at work) you can be sure no package will go thru them anymore.
And for a reference, I used federal express, and DHL, never had that kind of problem, package insured for 500$US another insured for 300$, so it's really a UPS issue, it's really bad customer service and total abusing. Of course they didn't give a receipt, they pulled that one off, I've got no papertrail exept their database, and for 60$ I won't go thru all the trouble of getting my relative to piss on them to get a refund... really clever, but this time I will remember.
I'm sure there will be a hundred of similar stories posted here, I never heard anything good from UPS since this happened to me, I keep hearing horror stories.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I've disliked UPS for a long while now, for other customer-service issues.
I've come home several times to find a sticker on my door saying "we came by, we'll come by again tomorrow." No way to simply leave a signature, or to request a time to have 'em come by, or to request that I go pick it up -- just "we came, we'll come again." Useless.
The other problem I've had is when tracking packages online. They tout this instant-update tracking system, but really, it's a "Revisionist History" system. I've seen a package hit a milestone at, say, 3:00 am, then nothing at all for two days, then on the third day (after I've finally received it), the tracking page updates to show milestones at 6:00 and 14:30 on the first day, 8:00 on the second day, and the actual delivery. I've also had it claim that a package was already delivered, when it hadn't even been shipped yet. Once, I had a package listed (for a week) as coming in two boxes. Then, when only one box shows up, I get all pissed, until I open it up and find everything in the one box. So I go back to the tracking page, and guess what? No sign of two boxes EVER being in the system.
Of course, the problem with FedEx is that I usually need to sign, so when that comes to my house I gotta arrange to go to their office to pick it up. And I've had USPS leave boxes on my lowermost step instead of next to my door (I'm in a townhouse, so this is only marginally better than leaving it at the curb), and once had a USPS package left in the pouring rain such that the box literally disolved when I opened it. Fortunately, the contents were in a plastic bag. Basically, they all suck, to varying degrees.
As for your situation, I'd say there MUST be some way you could sue them in small claims court or something. They may have disclaimed "no insurance," but they certainly have some amount of liability, otherwise they could just steal packages with impunity and never even bother to deliver. I'd check with a lawyer, seriously. Also ensure you've got GOOD photos and documentation (a lawyer should help you figure this part out, too). It could be that a nasty letter from a law firm would be enough to get 'em to do something. Remember also that they've probably got their own blanket insurance, anyway, for just such an emergency.
On the other hand, you could just be screwed. My condolances, especially with regards to all the "oh, it's just a Mac" comments here.
We used to get battered boxes all the time at my old job, once in a while we'd get one that looked like someone took a bat to the side, but none were EVER as bad as the pictures this dude took. Those are unreal.
But I stopped using UPS for a different reason-- because they employ idiots. Whenever I get a 'delivery attempted' note, I immediately call to have them hold the package for me at the depot (nobody is ever home during the day, so 2nd and 3rd attempts would be useless). The last time I did that, I got to the depot only to find that my request had been ignored, the package had gone back out for delivery, and that I would have to wait until I actually got the second 'attempted delivery' note before I could arrange to pick up in person again. And no apology from the woman behind the customer service counter though I was visibly fuming over a wasted trip and having to wait another day for a computer part that I needed badly. Morons!
~Philly
Fedex is far from perfect either...
I used to work for a large Boston hospital and we had to ship out 2 SGI Origin 2000 servers to a colleague in Utah. They were fairly maxed out machines and we spent a lot of time loading our brain modelling software onto them. Anyhow, we had kept the original SGI anal-retentive packaging and reboxed them and shipped them out.
I decided I might as well insure them to the max, as it was only about 400$ a computer. That gave them $250,000 a piece, if I remember correctly.
Anyhow, they arrived and were badly damaged. When my boss found passed me later that night on the street (just by chance) he told me of what happened and when I mentioned what I had insured them for, he literally lept with glee. Anyhow, Fedex Never paid the hospital the money and the hospital ruled that it would be too much of a bother to bring them to court over it. (Go figure).
Let's hope it's nervgas, because someone taking that little pride in their jobs... you know what I mean. Whom of us wouldn't go apshit to see our computers fucked up like that? Or just about anyones stuff really. Even with compensation I would be pissed.
Just my little rant, I'm having a major cold and pink eyes (jippie!) at the same time, but I bet I still feel better than the poor sap who used UPS. Or as a former boss said when we got an empty package from Japan (that should have contained an expensive camera). UPS, consider it gone...
1.) Back up your data. Do it twice.
2.) Buy a "Dish Wrap" moving box.
3.) Fill the box to 1 foot deep with shipping peanuts
4.) Wrap your machine in large bubble wrap and secure it with liberal amounts of packing tape
5.) Stand your machine up dead center in the box.
6.) Backfill the box with more shipping peanuts
7.) Make sure that the box is slightly overfilled with shipping peanuts so the box is somewhat difficult to close. This will help to prevent the machine inside from moving around too much.
8.) Insure your shipment. Don't be cheap.
If you want something done, do it yourself. Just load the damn computer in your car and drive it the hell out there yourself. If you don't want to do it yourself, insure the hell out of it because they WILL break it otherwise (Sometimes they'll break it anyway.) If they won't insure it for you, take your business elsewhere.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Who remembers this article a while back?
The USPS, even when faced with items such as an unwrapped deer tibia and rotting wheel of cheese, had a 64% received rate. Right now they're looking alot better than UPS or Fedex.
The "experiment" is documented here at the Annals of improbable research.
NEVER EVER EVER send anything by UPS unless you get in insured and 2 day aired or less. If you have ever seen one of their distribution centers, you would be shocked. Imagined miles of conveyer belts going 5 stories up. Boxes on each one... as they roll across, a barcode reader reads the UPC code and an arm will push the box off the conveyer belt to the next level down, depending on it's destination. I saw TV boxes drop 5 stories and onto the ground, the maintenance person just picks it up and throws it back on the belt. They do this for efficiency, but with absolutely no regard to the contents of the packages.
The reason I say 2 day air or less, is because those packages are not as automated... they are taken by actual people from truck to plane to truck to plane. This is probably the only way you can get something shipped intact to it's destination.
Maybe it would help our troubled friend in winning compensation if we wrote little notes that he could attach to letters destined for UPS. UPS just might react to having its name widely tarnished and many voices speaking out for an ill-treated customer. Even if Jutus is from Canada, I think this is the least we as a community could do to help him out. :)
To Whom It May Concern,
This kind of service is an outrage, and it has now become a powerful public warning to the rest of us who ship computer hardware and other sensitive equipment. Typically, I've used UPS to move my machines around over long distances (Pitt, PA to Coos Bay, OR). I've almost always used UPS when ordering PC components off the Internet.
If this is how fragile packages are treated by UPS in shipment, I feel they are no longer a sufficient carrier for electronic goods. Furthermore, the action or lack thereof, to resolve the situation this young man experienced in a satisfactory fashion, shows that UPS has no good faith whatsoever towards providing good value for their customers or well being for the packages they ship.
I'm afraid it would be foolish and unwise for myself or anyone else to use such an unreliable and irresponsible delivery service. I'm sure if UPS would be willing to fully compensate individuals for destroyed packages and destroyed contents, this attitude could be easily changed. Until then, UPS must remain a service to be avoided.
I hope you are willing to correct your mistakes in this case so that myself and others may resume use of your services. Thank you.
Sincerely,
siliconNO@SPAM.compsci.duq.edu
Why bother.
I used to work for a courier and anything that had "Fragile" on it was fair game to be mistreated. The mentality was that if it's fragile, then the sender should've had the sensability to pack it properly. Now I must mention here that I was also 17 years old at the time or around there.
You can take comfort in the fact, that at least Tupperware has a lifetime guarantee on their products. Take that bowl to the nearest Tupperware party and the Tupperware representative can either get it replaced right then and there or possibly give you a voucher to get it replaced. Good luck.
That is two computers AND a monitor in ONE 4 cubic foot box?!?! I use a larger box for ONE machine. Am I missing something?
I have a friend who used to work in a distribution center of a major courier. He would recant the most hilarious stories of his shipping shenanigans. He and his compatriots were most enamored with packages marked 'fragile'. Warehouse hockey, football and basketball were regular favorites. Drop kicking field goals with the small packages and playing forklift skewer with the larger ones. They took a special delight in 'accidentally' knocking over stacks of computer packages boldly marked fragile. It frankly amazes anything worked after they got a hold of it.
John
Oh, boo fuckin hoo.
Your "well packed" equiptment was apparently expensive enough for you to whine about, but not expensive enough to insure, and ship appropriately. What sort of idiot ships a fragile, ESD sensitive, vibration sensitive, humidity sensitive $2000 piece of equiptment via UNINSURED UPS Ground?! Its rediculous to assert that UPS doesn't insure internationally. Go look at their webpage! You just didn't want to pay extra to have it shipped the way you should have shipped it! You likely went as cheaply as possible, and subjected your machine to two or three weeks of abuse in the system when for a few bucks more, you could have done the job right!
If you actually looked at UPS's website, and saw their rates for an example journey from Montreal to Miami, you'de know how much your decision to go cheap cost you. You probably payed $78, the cheapest possible rate for a 25kg package measuring 40cm x 40cm x 40cm. For $40 more, you could have had it delivered in 3 days guaranteed and insured for $2000.
For every fuckup any shipping company makes, they do the job correctly a million times. You voluntarrily elected to subject your machine to the equivalent of "riding in the cattle car"...What did you expect?
In other words, it's not UPS's fault that youre a dumbass...And a cheap dumbass, at that.
Bowie J. Poag
Next time you ship a computer with UPS, label the box with "BIOHAZARD" (with that nifty, sharp, menacing logo). Chances are, shippers won't want to break it open, exposing themselves to strange, white powder. Of course, they may call the FBI... which would only lend more scrutiny to the package care... and if it's damaged, you could sue both the FBI & UPS. Right?
:)
Why bother.
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!
If you can read you would notice:
"UPS Ground does not insure international shipments"
To translate, that mean he couldn't insure it with UPS.
Where on UPS's site does it say that? In may, I shipped a computer to Montreal from NY, and insured it for $1000. This is not a policy change either - I just went to the UPS shipping charge calculator, and was able to get insurance for a package for both US->CA and CA->US. Insurance is only $0.35 for each $100 of value.
Having worked for RPS, I can vouch for it. Shipping is not done by angles, it's done by $5.00/hour strongbacks. They hum stuff from trucks to conveyor belts. They hate heavy boxes they can't get their hands around. Big light boxes are a joy to them. Sometimes things fall down. Yes, I was a stong back for two or three years. The worst boxes were from a beauty shop. They broke every time, sending sheen and other goo onto the floor! Did I mention plastic wraps inside?
Your boxes look like they recieved significant drops. It's hard to tell how those boxes were packed, and if indeed you used more than one. The cardboard, however, is clearly old and the box should have been discarded.
Thank you for posting the pictures. They are good examples of what can happen. My condolenses for your parts. The folks who did this, I'm sure, cursed when it happened but did not waste too much time with it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
First: you must match the package to its contents. DO NOT try to fit as much as you can in a single, LARGE box. Instead, use smaller, properly sized boxes for each major piece of equipment. The biggest reason for this is that a lighter package, when dropped, will not produce as much force on impact. Inevitably, all impact forces are first applied to a specific part of the package or a specific item in the package. Therefore, a heavy package, loaded with many items, when dropped, is more likely to apply enough force to one of the items in it to break them, as compared to similar drops of the items packaged individually.
Second: The items, shipped in the box should NEVER end up as the primary load bearing members of the package structure. This is why computer and monitor boxes a)use double layered corrugated cardboard boxes and b) have heavy-duty Styrofoam pieces to provide an internal structure underneath the skin created by the cardboard. Bubble wrap does not provide such a structure. Additionally, the Styrofoam is resilient, like bubble wrap, but more so. Styrofoam keeps its shape much better.
Now, most times those factors are what keep computers, as shipped from the factory, in retail packaging, safe in shipping. Sometimes, EVEN those factors aren't enough and that's a clear indication of major incompetence on the part of the shipping company.
Those two requirements, it sadly seems, were not met by Jutus (the shipper). So, as much as I hate to point any blame, it seems that some blame does reside on the shipper, not all on the shipping company.
Again, this is my opinion, based on my experience, working in purchasing for the IT department of a med/small company and from years of purchasing my own machines via the 'net or mail-order.
-i
It's standard fare for boxes to be thrown into and off of the trucks. It's nothing new, you just have to try to package your stuff as well as you can, try to insure it, and hope for the best. That's what the airlines do, too. Just in case you think I'm lying, think about the last time you flew anywhere, and that person with the huge bag that tried to take it on the plane and were told they had to check it. By the time you board the plane all the prechecked bags have already been stowed, so guess what that banging around under the plane is after you get to your seat? Yup, that's all the bags that are checked at the gate. The ramp guys HATE having to go back in after they're already done. And the heavier it is, the more it gets thrown.
I don't have much experience with FedEX, but every large company has a few bad employees. UPS severely damaged an insured router I shipped from my office to my home, but they did update the internet viewable routing information that the shipment was damaged, so that was easily dealt with. They also like to use the huge hub that is one hour from my apt, rather than use the local office/warehouse that's ten minutes down the road. This doesn't matter much until I ship myself an overnight package, they try to deliver twice on the same day, and on the third delivery attempt (only two days), they take it back to the main hub. For some unknown reason they require delivery signatures on all overnight packages (though not on all others). Then I have either 5 or 7 days to go there and pick it up, or they ship it back to the sender (me at the office). It's an incredible PITA to drive an hour to get a package when you could have picked it up 10 minutes away.
Okay, maybe you can borrow someone else's paddle. Was any of this purchased recently? On a credit card with nice automatically warranty protection? Perhaps your home owners/renters insurance covers such an accident? (Mine would.)
"Thank you for your inquiry. We sincerely apologize for the condition in which your merchandise arrived. We are unable to determine when or where any damage may have occurred to your uninsurable personal effects from Canada. Personal effects imported from Canada to the United States cannot be insured. We are unable to process a Damage Inspection Report for your computer.
Thank you for using UPS Internet Services.
Marilee"
So basically I'm screwed, period.
UPS Canada does not know if the shipment was damaged in the States, and vice versa. In accordance with UPS's policy on these matters, my only choice is to suck it. UPS does not respond to customer needs as one entity. It has a billion departments internally to shove your issue around to for weeks.
Again, if they had offered insurance, I would have taken it. They advertise "dependable" service, and this is my first (and last) time shipping with UPS. Obviously in hindsight I am a moron.
My oversight was in assuming "dependable" service includes your items arriving in one piece.
I once received a hanger from UPS on my door indicating that they could not deliver my package because they couldn't find my address. Note that they would have had to parse the address properly to leave the paper hanger on my doorknob. The logic of this was lost on the customer service rep.
In any case, though - no offense, but you can't just wrap a computer in a cardboard box, no matter how sturdy, and expect it to survive, with anyone. UPS is crap, for sure. But these places have conveyor belts all over the shop that can't read the word "fragile" and that can throw other packages against your package as well as jamming your package against itself, walls, etc., you can even consider the fact that these packages get crammed into boxes and shifted onto planes. The human who takes your box at the counter will handle it with ginger gloves - the sweating ex-felon trying to get it and 300,000 other boxes onto the plane by 2 am cutoff or else won't.
Matey, for future reference - when shipping, pack the thing in a crate, and send it with a reputable company. Anticipate it being dropped. Anticipate it getting mashed by another package. Anticipate it sitting on a runway in below zero weather.
I'd like to advise this Canadian that his attempt to get back at UPS might not result in him getting his computer replaced (such a Canadian idea - complain and shame the company into refunding your money!) - instead, it might result in a process server hauling HIM into court and winning for millions for "slander", "libel", "daring to back-chat a multi-national" or any such crime.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Last summer, I was a-wanderin' down my street, and lo, there was a Fed Ex truck double parked to the right of me.
Overhead and moving fast, a package launched from the truck landed hard and skidded on the greystone's front stoop.
I looked at the driver; he said, "You didn't see that."
I agreed I didn't.
Fed Ex, UPS, it's all the same -- don't judge by brand. Men will still throw packages around, because it's fun.
...to move the following of my personal stuff:
We recently moved and let the gorillas move everything but the things I listed above. Sure I had to rent a small truck but nothing was damaged. It was well worth the small cost.
Many years ago, a ``professional'' moving company found a way to severely dent a peuter plate wedding present given to me by the EE faculty where I was teaching. It was packed in the middle of a bunch of china which miraculously managed to survive the move. Of course the moving company found some reason that they weren't liable.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
This assures no human will try and lift (and possibly drop) it, and that they will have to handle it with a palette lifter.
Also, have the UPS associate inspect your packaging before you send it off, so they can't complain about improper packing. There should be 6" between your cargo and the container wall packed with shock absorbing material.
As for the claims, yes they can take months. It's much better to prevent damage entirely and dummy proof your package by attaching it to a large object like a palette.
The computer was shipped via UPS flight 1331 which is occasionally used by the Canadian Secret Police for black ops. It seems that a group of terrorists from Greenland were attempting to infiltrate Quebec and poison the Maple Syrup harvest and blame it on the OntarioFirst! movement, thus giving more fuel to the Quebec independence movement. (If Quebec gets its independence Newfoundland will be cut off from the rest of Canada and ripe for invasion by Greenlander nationalists who have strived for centuries to liberate Vinland from the yoke of Canadian oppression.)
Well, flight 1331 was diverted to drop paratroopers into Northern Quebec in an attempted to foil the dastardly Greenlander plot. After the paratroopers were dropped, unexpected windsheer downed flight 1331 over Hudson bay.
Search and rescue failed to find any traces of flight 1331, but the copilot, Red McFearson miraculously survived. Red managed to swim his way onto an iceberg.
On his iceberg, Red had many adventures... including a near fatal attempt to milk a polar bear in desperation brought on by hunger. However, it turns out that polar bears like to be milked and Red was able to survive.
Only two things kept Red going during those months stranded on the iceberg suckling the polar bear... his special relationship he developed with a hocky puck, Marsha... and his drive to fulfill his duty and DELIVER YOU PACKAGE which he was able to salvage from the wreckage.
So, you see, you have no room to complain and you should be greatful for the patriotic, dedicated men and women of UPS.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
What I would like to see is some legitimate evidence backing up this story that the computer is trashed. Right now all we have is pictures, and as much as it pains me to see a Mac that badly broken, we certainly are not provided with any evidence confirming that UPS did indeed ship this equipment. Funny, but I would think that would be essential to having a legitimate case, pun not intended.
So where's the scan of the UPS invoice? I shudder to think that pictures alone are enough to convince people of the guilt of a company, when not one of the pictures indicates the company did indeed ship the equipment after all.
That Mac plastic is tough, but is not bullet proof. I once conducted a test with the door of a rev A iMac and my .762 CZ-52 handgun and a 12 gauge. The Mac plastic did not shatter when shot with the .762, which was pretty amazing, but the 12-gauge pretty much pelletized it.
Thanks for the hot tip!
Man, if only PC manufacturers had similar policies.
I'm sure UPS dropped this multiple times from extremely high levels nad probably ran into it with a forklift :) but it really seems like the box you used did contribute to the damagae since it wasn't even close to sturdy enough.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I used to have the best of luck with UPS. But recently, they've been pummeling the shit out of everything. You know those really hard cardboard mailing tubes? They beat it up so bad, it actually creased the poster inside the tube. Another (quite sturdy) box I had shredded open, and some UPS guy apparently taped some of those holes back up.
Have I been lucky that it was fine before now, or do they have an increased load because of the post office's anthrax scare and the like?
Sorry about your computer. If it helps, I'll stay away from shipping my stuff UPS.
I had similar problems shipping a recording console with UPS. They refused to even return my calls until I started threatening a lawsuit. I have made the entire story, including photos and contact information, available at http://www.christopherpetro.com/ups
As for FedEx, I have sometimes had problems with them (though far less often). The important difference, however, is that it has never required a threat of a lawsuit to get FedEx to cover my damaged or lost packages.
Packages shipped via UPS Ground from Canada are protected automatically against damage or loss up to $100, and Excess Value Insurance (brochure available here) can be purchased for values exceeding that. The cost is only 35 cents per $100 of value, up to $50,000 of coverage. Looks like he just didn't opt for the coverage.
Caveat expeditor.
I work in a small computer store that gets the majority of its supplies by UPS.
If it wasn't for the quality of the packaging supplied by most computer equipment manufacturers, I'd suspect a significant portion of the equipment would be damaged in transit.
The items in question were all shipped from a national wholesaler (techdata) via UPS. A motherboard I recieved had a partially crushed box. I've seen Athlon processors arrive in dented boxes. Some of the boxes look like they have been torn apart. However, the parts usually arrive in working order, despite the damage.
To UPS, its just a package, that is handled and moved by a bunch of low-paid workers who have no interest in treating your package with TLC, and the management doesn't seem to add any accountability. Until management cares enough to track where and when the damage occurs, and uses that information to remove the problem employees, nothing will improve.
Just my $.02
My god.... I'd say that was intentional damage by looking at those photos!
:-)
:-)
:-)
Hey, anyone want to try an experiment?
Get an old 386 in a tower case - something you wouldn't mind losing, or something you'd actually *LIKE* to see mangled (eg : That old pentium that won't stop BSODing in Windows and that you can't get Linux to work properly on.)...
...And ship it UPS with "kick me" written on the box instead of "fragile"
I'd like to see how mangled a condition the box is in wen it arrives at its' destination
...Of course, they'd probly leave it alone and it'll arrive in pristine condition, but you'd sorta expect that
...this is getting out of hand
...In the proper shipping container, probably via UPS.
I've shipped all kinds of computers, monitors, and other peripherals (even ceramics, large mirrors, bottles of wine, and antiques) domestically and internationally by package services, container freight, as checked airline luggage, by truck, and just plain old mail. Plenty of damage to the boxes, but no damage to the contents *ever*.
They may take up space, but the original shipping cartons are designed to take the punishment. If you don't want to, or can't keep yours, get one that some new purchaser has just gotten rid of. If you can't do that, pack properly.
Use bubble wrap, lots of it. Get styrofoam from the trash somewhere. Nest packed cartons inside of cartons. Pack the cartons full. If the contents are even slightly loose (as these seem to have been) then "Contents may settle during shipping." Look in you next box of Triscuits and checkout the dust at the bottom.
Insure everything that is of any value to you.
If the contents are valuable, isn't it worth an evening of your time to do it right?
It's not UPS vs FEDEX vs whatever. They all hire cheap labor to do something as quickly and cheaply as they can. They all suck at babysitting your plastic knick-knacks. Shipping companies do not care about your personal possessions. You do. Take some responsibility.
Or now that you're in America you can sue. Good Luck!
Sig?
Sigue Sigue Sputnik!!!
They're called UPS ground. The stuff is not quite ground up, but they had a fair go at it.
Purolator is really designed for office-to-office packages.
They suck for home delivery. However, if you're shipping direct to another business, they're stellar.
XpressPost is an excellent service, you're right, though. It's not quite as fast as Purolator for office-to-office ships, but it's fantastically reliable, and very fast (Vancouver-Fredericton in 3 days the one time I went that far, and anywhere in Ontario to anywhere else in Ontario next day).
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Two funny UPS stories which highlight the kind of service they have:
My roomate in college worked at UPS during the summer, and he said that if a box was fragile or looked interesting they would often "accidently" open them by throwing them in front of trucks as they pulled out. The box & contents would be battered to hell, and they would get to find out what was inside. Also, if something was put on the conveyor belt and it was a little too large, they would kick it until it would go down the conveyor belt.
The second story concerns some books that were supposed to be delivered to me. I lived on 927 S King St. and my package was dropped off at 199 W. Madison St., which was approxiamtely 7 blocks away. I was lucky that one of my friends just happened to live there, or else I never would have got my package. According to UPS's tracking site, the package was delivered to my house. Ever since then, I've tried to ship FedEx whenever possible.
If it's supposed to move and doesn't, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
OK, first, if the shipping company won't insure it and you can't find a seperate policy, don't ship it with that company. You don't have any real recourse (other than maybe small claims court) if things get smashed.
:)
Second, don't pack the gear yourself unless you've got the correct materials and the knowledge of how to use them. Or maybe the orginal shipping containers (I keep those myself). The place I used to buy gear from a number of years ago did something they called Gorilla Pack, which was factory boxes, wrapped in plastic and placed in an outer box and surrounded by expanding packing foam. Works great.
Last, never sign for a package (or allow one to be signed for) without inspecting for damage. Once you've signed, you're screwed. I actually had to train the receiving clerks at $FORMER_CLIENT to call the appropriate hardware guys when stuff came in before letting the driver off the hook. Threatening to take the cost of a server that cost an order of magnitude more than they made in a year out of their paycheck got the point across.
Man, I hope you have backups.
Now, FedEx has problems too, but UPS == avoid! I have a friend who worked there and he was always telling me about how packages would be damaged by co-workers tossing them around in their haste to get more packages moved. They have a bunch of anal, peppy manager-types who exhort everyone to work faster, and they time everyone's speed. Go too slow and you get criticized or lose the job. So packages get tossed and squished.
If you're shipping something they can't break, then go with UPS. Great for shipping clothing and most foods, because it's reasonably cheap. But don't trust them with electronics, glassware, or art. Use FedEx for that.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
The irony comes in to play when you get the UPS TOS sent to you when you start an account with UPS. It's a four book set about shipping policies. Ten to fifteen pages are just about how to file a claim with UPS. They pretty much have every possable thing that can happen to your package, and if it is covered in the TOS. This means that each thin in the TOS happned to a pakcage at one point. Or some lawyer thought that a UPS employee may dunk your package under-water.
Either way, I use a personal courier if something is really important. FedEx and Airborne are no better.
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
F log
R elentlessly
A nd
G rind
I nto
L imp
E xtinction
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
After spending a few years in the shipping/recieving docks of UPS, I give this piece of advice:
Your package is nothing more than something to take aggression out on. $9.00/hr for shit work makes one very angry, and it is your package that loses out. A fragile package just means it breaks easier when it's thrown into the trailer.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
More importantly:
If you see that the box is obviously fucked up, and you are asked to sign for it... DON'T! Make the driver pack it back into his truck. You do not have to accept the package. The fine print on the reciept often holds you responsible for damages if you do not "inspect the package" before signing for it. I used to work for a mailorder computer company, and that's what we told our customers to do if boxes showed up obviously physically damaged. That way, the boxes are returned to the shipper, and he/she can make a claim for damages. Of course, if you yourself are the shipper, it makes it a little more complicated. Once you've officially accepted delivery, UPS assumes you have accepted the condition of the parcels. Still, I say pester UPS until you get your refund. Call every day if you have to. Have a lawyer friend of yours send a threatening letter. Someone please post a link to a UPS CS page, so that we can all lodge a complaint on this guy's behalf.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
If there was any negligence you can sue...I KNOW I DID. Go to small claims court, file for the max and show your pictures, UPS never even showed up, I won the value of the hardware as on the market today, which means I lost hundreds but I got the machine back.
As an avid traveling LAN'r I must point out that DHL is the BEST carrier around. They have shipped my machine 15 or more times and never had a problem. We also use Airbourne express but that does not help for ground.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I feel your pain...
I build and ship custom acrylic water bubble fountains. Imagine routed/shaped plexiglass the size of a coffin. UPS used to smash them occasionally (but were well in$ured), until I switched to making all boxes out of 1/2" plywood. Home Depot will cut a $6.99 sheet of plywood for about 25 cents. Just screw it together and you have an instant UPS-proof crate for dirt cheap. Rope handles are good, too, so they UPS guy can easily pick up the box instead of dragging/throwing/dropping it.
For better protection, spray paint the crate in really bright, catchy colors. I would use yellow/red/black/green/blue spray paint and paint swirls, spots, lines, outline corners and 12 inch tall letters saying FRAGILE. That way your package isn't 'just another box' to UPS. It's a box that really stands out to them and catches attention. Kinda like how poisonious tree frogs are brightly colored for their protection.
(Imagine a Beowolf closter of signature lines)
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
... so it seems that you have to just sit back and cross your fingers no matter what shipper you use.
Let me get this straight: You put a Powermac G4 tower, an PowerTower Pro, and a monitor all in one box, and expected them to survive?
I don't see how all three would even fit in one box, as the box looks to be the size that a normal monitor (plus copeous styrofoam blocks that the manufacturer uses (hint, hint)) comes in.
Did you just pile them in with some newspaper and think that it would be okay? In general, 'fragile' or not, expect your box to get dropped from 4 or 5 feet a few times in transit. Basically, there should never, ever be direct contact between your valued hardware and the interior of the box.
As for insurance, that's a different issue. I hope you get your money, but it reminds me of a friend who says he wouldn't mind getting hit by a car as long as he had medical insurance. Me, I'd prefer not to have the pain and suffering in the first place.
Kevin Fox
You're both wrong, it stands for United Pot Smokers!
Fuckers destroyed 4 of my monitors in a row..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Not sure about bulletproofing here, but...
iMac plastic is nowhere near invulnerable. I've cut apart a rev D (building a flat profile box with it after the monitor went bad) and played with the plastics. It's not that structurally solid. Three (but not two) foot drop with a brick dented it pretty bad, left small cracks.
The Graphite G4 case is another story. I'd gutted a box (I was doing some stuff with the MB and replacing most of the other parts with upgraded components) and accidentally knocked the case down a concrete stairwell. (Don't ask.) Went chasing after it (no power supply in it at that time, but I didn't want to lose the hinging case) and found it seemingly undamaged. Got curious, tried to damage one of the top "leg" loops by hanging the case by the loop over a steel strut and bringing a hammer, then a crowbar, then a sledge down on it. It ended up looking a bit scuffed, but...
I have a Quicksilver G4 at work. If anything, it seems to be made of tougher materials than the Graphite. I have no idea what the B&W is made of, but it looks and feels flimsier on close inspection than the later models.
I've also seen (not participated in) unscheduled stress tests on one of the colorful iBook models. I swear they are invincible when closed. Certainly, any laptop that survives getting bounced over a second story balcony by two scrapping little girls without any detectable issues (I don't understand how the HD survived!) deserves marks.
I'd be curious how the compact ice iBook would fare by comparison.
I've seen, on the other end of the spectrum, a compaq plastic minitower cave when a rather large guest of the owners sat on top of it. Did't damage the mobo, but the power supply got tweaked (the aluminum frame's top bent into it) and had to be replaced, as did the case and the CD-Rom (this was several years ago).
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
remember folks, UPS is pronounced 'oops!'.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This would be an interesting experiment for someone in here with a friend on the opposite side of the country from him/her and a little extra disposable income:
Prepare two identical boxes like this: Put an old Yellow Pages [of a decently-sized city] or something about that heavy into a box just large enough to hold it, seal that box, then pack that inside another, larger box, padded carefully as if it were a stereo component or something.
Mark one box "FRAGILE," and maybe "GLASS" on every side, in huge letters with the thickest, blackest marker you've got. Underline it. Twice. Don't put anything special on the other. Ship them a week apart to your friend across the country via UPS Ground. See if they really do purposely beat the shit out of packages marked "Fragile."
With proper documentation, photos, maybe even video, this could make for an interesting school project/web site/thing to send to your local TV station's "consumer advocate"/thing to send to a network newsmagazine show.
~Philly
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
Slap one of these on your packages to see if it's been abused during transit: http://www.pitrone.com/dropntellprices.html
Helps keep your shipper honest!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
My mother-in-law sent a box of irreplacable things via UPS. Like my husband's childhood teddy bear. A photo album from birth to now of her beloved youngest son. A quilt she herself made (and she can't make any more due to arthritis). An heirloom deviled egg dish (yes, there is such a thing-but you only find it in the South). You name it. 2 whole boxes of such stuff. Uninsured.
However, she was told at the Jackson, MS, depot that she was not allowed to close the 2 boxes--a UPS person had to do that. Dutifully, my extremely gullible mother-in-law hands over her 2 open boxes to get sent off to me.
Fast forward 2 weeks after I receive the boxes. She is talking about how I haven't said how I liked my egg dish and cookie mix. Bells go off on my head, as the box was rather strangely empty and the quilt had been covered in chocolate chips, and I had only gotten one box. Evidently, she had actually sent 2--some low-life had taken out what s/he wanted (some of the pictures were missing, and 2 photo albums had been "combined" into one.
I had a quilt, and one Xmas present. Some idiot had taken the heirloom deviled egg dish (causing _my_ mother, who is not AS southern as my mother-in-law, to HOWL with laughter thinking of THAT gift getting explained to a grandmother/brother/girlfriend). I was extremely offended, and got designated to call UPS.
The conversation went something like this:
"Yes, I need customer service. Yes, ma'am, I'm missing over half of shipment number XYZ, and would like to speak to the supervisor of the Jackson, MS, depot about what I consider a theft."
Customer Rep: "Ma'am, what was in the box?"
"Well, let's see, the usual irreplacible, priceless objects such as my husband's childhood teddy bear, a photo album tracing from his birth to high school, an heirloom piece of glassware.."
The customer service lady groans.
I didn't get off the phone until I had an issue number, her name, and her phone number, and had assured her my father-in-law was returning to the depot the next day to "speak" with the supervisor. In case you don't know Southernese, "speak" is a pretty serious word.
He got a personal apology from the supervisor about the theft. And eventually, a $100 check (all uninsured packages are worth).
But sometimes, I giggle to myself, thinking of the guilt someone's carrying over giving a stolen egg dish to their grandmother.
I stopped using them years ago, both because of their handling of packages and because of their use of digital signature pads (which leave you with no recourse when they claim that they have your signature). I found Fedex and DHL to be considerably better.
Even if you do use original packaging including molded styrofoam, those clever UPS folks will find a way to damage your shipment. While the damage is likely to be less than what this guy photographed, it's still damage.
We received a rackmount APC Uninteruptable Power Supply (overloaded abbreviations!) via UPS ground. The front plate is steel, about 5mm (about 3/16") thick. It was severaly bent, and we had to straighten it with a benchtop vice.
I've shipped a computer in the original packaging via UPS ground. When it arrived, some case screws had popped out, the case frame was bent, and the plastic front had broken pieces. Needless to say the case didn't really fit right after that.
I've never had damage with FedEx ground, though I've had two computers shipped that way (in original packaging). I had to pick one up from the FedEx distribution location because they messed up the delivery (never put it on the truck), and the box was banged up a little, but the case was fine.
Whenever a vendor doesn't offer FedEx ground, I write a note requesting they consider it.
-Paul Komarek
The box(es) you show on the page are way too small to comfortably hold the items you are shipping, and they are not NEARLY strong enough. You probably used boxes which are not new (ie, they've been weakened) and are cheap single wall, probably rated for maybe 30-60 pounds new?
You are shipping items that are as fragile as glass, and weigh 40-80 pounds. You need at LEAST new double wall cardboard boxes with a minimum of 6-10 inches of clearance on each side of the item filled with both a durable packing material(dense foam, cardboard, etc), and a light soft material (light foam, bubble wrap, etc. Then you need to INSURE each item for what it would cost you to replace it new. If they don't offer insurance on a particular service, then use a higher grade service or another company altogether.
It's sad to see when someone suffers the consequences of their inexperience, but honestly, you could have done better. You were probably worried about the packing job before you got them back.
Blame UPS all you want. They could have done better as well, but this is par for the course, and you finally got a good look at the lay of the land.
-Adam
Yes, I HAVE worked for UPS! And I'll tell you what happened -
;)
Your boxes were put on the top of a large stack of boxes inside either a trailer or railroad box car, probably at each stop.
Unloaders have to push 45 boxes a minute out of that trailer/box car.
The Unloaders have a little trick you learn early and use often in order to make those boxes flow out of the back of that trailer/box car like water out of a dam.
You reach up about a foot above eye level and start pulling, making sure the whole stack leans with it. Once you reach critical pull you let gravity take over... with a little luck some those boxes will bounce out of the back and onto the rollers for you, the rest you kick into place and push like hell.
Sometimes you can get 60+ boxes a minute that way. Sorry folks, but getting the package to it's destination on time is more important than getting it there in one peice. See "Cast Away" for more.
The theory that 'fragile' boxes, or any of your boxes are singled out is more myth than fact, there's just not any time to discriminate!
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
I worked at UPS and though boxes are thrown around alot, they are cought carefully. writing fragile on abox means exactly that your box will be placed on top aswell as not thrown around. shipping with insurance is a definate necessity for any kind of expensive equipment but one thing you should know is that insurance does not cover improperly packed equipment. so the moral of the story is bring expensive equipment to somewhere like MailBox Etc to have it shipped thus dissalowing you any liability
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
The way UPS and FedEx employees drive those trucks around here, it seems like they hardly value their lives, let alone our packages.
-- dR.fuZZo
I am very sorry that your equipment was damaged, but you made some very fatal mistakes.
1) Posted in the UPS center where you shipped your equipment are guidelines for packing matterial and minimum crush-strength box matterial for various size/weight packages. Looking at your pictures I can see that your box did NOT meet those guidelines. I can see this just by looking at the pictures.
2) Insurance for your package would have cost $0.35 per $100. That's only $10.50US to insure your shipment for $3,000. I called and verified this for a Canada-to-US shipment.
3) Remember: Your package rides conveyor belts, slides down shutes, is loaded and unloaded on delivery vans, tractor-trailers, and train cars. It travels thousands of miles along with 10's of thousands of other packages some of which may weigh as much as 177lb's and somebody's pakcage has to be on the bottom of the stack. That's the reality of it.
Here are my suggestions:
1) Buy the insurance (duh!!!!)
2) Pack your stuff like it's going to be air-dropped. You know the packaging your G4 came in? That's how you SHOULD have packed it. If you had it would still be fine. There is a reason a new Dell comes in a box strong enough to support a VW.
There is a reason UPS and other shippers have those packing guidelines posted. And the reason they offer insurance is for the people who don't read the shipping guidelines. Sometimes packages that are done right do get damaged, but not often.
Shippers dont' intentionally harm your packages. The damage most likely occured durring transit in a tractor-trailer or box-car. The employees don't kick and drop packages. They just don't. UPS is VERY consious of this. If you are seen intentionally damaging a package you are FIRED ON THE SPOT. I saw a guy get a written warning for dropping a package just 6 inches. I saw another guy get fired for eating a jolly-rancher candy that fell out of a damaged package.
I'm sorry your equipment was damaged. I know you are upset and I know it sucks when this sort of thing happens. I hope my comments will help you avoid having this happen to you again.
TIP: if you want to ship something and absolutely insure it's safety, ship it in a hard plastic cooler. They come in all sizes and are the most indistructible thing you'll ever find. People ship fragile scientific instruments back and forth in GOTT coolers (with the lits taped down) all the time and they never get damaged. I know you can't get a mid-tower pc in one, but I just thought I'd mention it.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
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.
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.
Union goons and college students is the MO of UPS, at both the Lexington distro center and Louisville Hub. The campus flyers actually say, "Have you ever worked out for four hours and got paid for it?" 8 bucks an hour beats flipping burgers so a lot of people take a job, especially in October/November so they have Christmas cash. Suprisingly USPS priority mail is the least likely to break shit in IMHO, but I really don't trust them with my bills in first-class mail, go figure.
Read my plan to save the Bengals
In some states if you have an outstanding judgement against a company, you can hire the local police to do the collection. If they refuse to pay up, the police can just confiscate anything that appears to be the dollar value of the judgement.
If you can read you would notice:
"UPS Ground does not insure international shipments"
Yes, the story summary says that.
Unfortunately, it is wrong .
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Hah. That looks like the shipment I sent to myself when moving from southern California to one of the islands off the coast of Washington. I received my stereo speakers (big ones, 1.5'sqX3'h) broken in half, inside a box with all four corners blown out and the packing missing. Really. I never would have found out what happened, except that it was a small community, and I had a couple of friends who worked for UPS there. They'd actually dropped the box off of the side door of the airplane, hitting the rear edge of the loader, then landing on the tarmac.
But you want to know what the real mistake was? No insurance. No insurance means that the carrier has no liability and no incentive to protect the package. Frankly, if it falls out of the airplane over the ocean, they couldn't care less -- they have already received payment, and anything after that point is a loss. Unless you have insurance.
Judging from the pictures, they spent some extra time on your stuff. Perhaps they chocked the wheels on the 737 with your box?
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
After three semesters of college in Boston, I had moved back home for a semester of co-op. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to re-route a package that was being delivered to me via UPS. I called them up, had it rerouted, and they assured me that the driver would be notified about the reroute and not deliver the package.
Apparently they never called. What's worse, the UPS driver had some random person in the apartment sign it for me, rather than do what's supposed to be done and refuse delivery without a signature from me. UPS told me, however, that everything was okay.
That fucking package sat in the doorway of vacant apartment for two weeks before I found out about it (yay online shipment info.) Rather than deal with those fuckwits again, I had the apartment superintendent mail it to my home address via Priority Mail. It got there in 3 days.
What did I learn from the experience? Well, two things. Firstly, I had some very honest people in my apartment building and, secondly, UPS sucks ballon-knot, mummy-mouth style.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
is here, email forms are here.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I had no idea that stuff was so easy to buy. I think my department will be getting a can or three of this. We might even actually use it for its intended purpose. :-)
Thanks!
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I don't know how readily available these are to mere mortals, but when I was working for a tape library company, we used to ship them out with these little sticky things glued to the box. It was a tiny clear plastic device, filled with fluid, and a very thin glass vial of dye. If subjected to a shock, the vial would rupture, and the whole thing would turn red, and you knew it was subjected to abuse.
Once we started shipping with shock-guards (and outlined the policy with the shipper) - incidence of DOA units fell 95%.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Thinking of shipping Fed Ex? Maybe not after reading this story.
I'm on my way to a lab at a certain facility (names withheld because of details mentioned later). I happen to notice that the Fed Ex guy is unloading some things on my way up the walk. Suddenly I stop in horror as I watch him unload a small box that is absolutely COVERED in biohazard stickers and DROP it from shoulder height to the pavement at his feet. He then proceeds to pick up heavier, larger boxes and drop the from the same heighs ON TOP of the biohazard box!
Luckily, the contents of the box weren't hazardous: only some non-virulent strains of E. coli that a lab didn't happen to have on hand but needed for some reason. But what if it had been a package for a BSL-3 or BSL-4 lab? (for non-scientists, that's labs that work with bugs like HIV, tuberculosis, and Hanta virus) There are labs working with that nasty stuff at the facility. But the Fed Ex guy didn't really seem to care.
So if Fed Ex is careless with something so obviously marked as dangerous (what is more frightening than a box covered in bright red biohazard symbols?), just think of the loving care your packages much be receiving.
4-star general in a one-man army.
holy fuck! I thought those things were made of polycarbonate! What did they do? Salvage it out of the WTC wreckage? You have to hit it with some pretty serious force to get polycarbonate to shear like that.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
There is still something called 'gross negligence'.
ie: It is fair to assume that UPS is not going to take a shotgun & 50lb sledgehammer to your equipment and smash it to bits. You can't say 'Sorry, not our fault'. It just means there is no third party insurance.
This looks like gross negligence to me. It's not like something just got a bit bent (like, say, a china plate being broken in half or something.. or a cracked pane of glass). This stuff is *destroyed*.
And to think this wa sa comapny who supposedly specialized in moving entire companies.
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
One of my customers shipped a computer across the U.S. from one of his offices to another one. His shipping department packaged the computer. They ship hundreds of items a day, so believe me, they know what they're doing. He had Federal Express ship the computer with (what he thought at the time) was maximum insurance: $500. This computer, which is (or I should say, "was") worth over three thousand dollars, got wrecked to pieces during shipment. The loss wasn't limited to hardware damage either. If you account for the time he had to waste, the cost of a replacement, and the loss of data (the hard drives were badly damaged, and like most of my customers, he doesn't quite comprehend the importance of a reliable data backup system and policy), the damages could be worth well over $30,000.
My advice to anybody who wishes to ship a computer is as follows: First and foremost, backup all important information stored on this computer! I cannot stress this enough. Backups are so important, especially for businesses--I don't care if a good backup system costs $10,000, it's worth every penny. A good backup policy doesn't have to be complicated. It can be as simple as burning a CD once a week.
Secondly, I would NOT ship a computer in one piece. A computer case is mostly hollow and the parts are not held in place for strong shocks and vibrations. (I should know--I work in industrial computing, where the computer case is specially designed to protect the hardware against the harsh industrial environment.) I believe the best way to ship a computer is to disassemble it completely, placing each piece of hardware in its original packaging materials, and then packing all of these items in a well insulated box. Since most people discard their original packaging materials when they purchase a product--and I admit to fall into this category as there wouldn't be enough room in the shop to store all that packaging--the alternative is to obtain a bunch of anti-static wrappers (that's one thing I do keep from all hardware I buy) and to place all the hardware in this material, and then to package all the components in a well-insulated box. Furthermore, if I have a choice in the matter, I do not ship hard drives with any carrier, even with all the backups in the world, as I don't want personal or business data falling into the wrong hands, as unlikely as that might be. Besides, losing a hard drive is a nuisance, even with backups. So if I am travelling to the same destination as the computer, I take the hard drives with me in my luggage.
Third and finally, I would insure the computer for its entire value. Above, I said you should package all the individually packaged parts of the computer in a single, well insulated box for shipping. That is, do so only if you can insure one "item" (the entire box) for its total cost. If there is a limit to the insurance, like the Federal Express limit of $500, I would put the items into several boxes, with the contents of each individual box worth no more than $500 if you can help it. (If you have a graphics card that costs $800, you're out of luck on this one (at least on protecting against loss--a graphics card or whatever other piece of hardware is unlikely to get damaged if packaged individually), but there's always the possibility of transporting the really expensive components yourself.)
When it comes down to it, I think the best thing to do in any situation is to just use some common sense. You wouldn't want to drop your computer on the floor, no matter how well built it is. Since shippers usually throw and drop things without giving a damn as to what's inside the box, you should always think out the worst case scenerios whenever you ship anything, be it a computer or even something trivial.
I feel for you man.. but, if those pictures are at all accurate, the focus of your article should be 'how not to pack computers'.
Before you assume UPS beat your computers with a sledgehammer (which it looks like) consider what happens when a few thousand pounds of weight are put on a box while it's stacked with a bunch of other boxes, and said box is not packed correctly. The box quickly deforms; and those forces are concentrated on the contents of the box, ie: your computer.
Bubblewrap and paper, and a blanket wrap work fine to shield a computer from, say, a ride in the back of a pickup, or in the back seat of your car...
but for real shipping, you have to have that box packed such that forces are distributed evenly through the box.. AROUND what's in it. This means: custom fit styrofoam, like the way it's shipped to you... or packing peanuts. Or.. if it's blankets.. lots of them, wadded up into balls, and PACKED in. You should be able to stand on that box before shipping it out and not have anything bad happen.
Proper packing for shipment is about more than cushioning the contents from being knocked around, or keepin them from shifting... it's about distributing otherwise crushing forces in such a way that the contents are protected.
I'm sorry to say it... but what happened to your equipment really, truly looks like the result of improper packaging. It really DOES make that much of a difference.
Monitors are dangerous! You could shock yourself good! Like stop your heart shock yourself. Be careful if you are dumb enough to try this.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Soft padding simply won't work through the mail. I made this mistake once, thankfully on far less expensive items. It's especially pathetic when combined with hard, heavy objects like books (for me) or computers (for you).
Although I've seen several "you should have known better" postings, I disagree. Most packing guidelines are very poorly and/or ambiguously written. Just what does "adequate padding" mean? What could be more adequate than padding with several pillows, right? Wrong.
The packing material must not compress or else your packing is useless and you get "exploded" boxes that look, well, like yours. This is why computers are packed by the factory suspended in the middle of the box by styrofoam holders. The holders transfer the load of the other boxes stacked on top through to the boxes stacked underneath without collapsing. Bubble wrap is great for a thin protective layer around individual items, but it won't hold them in place within a box.
It's unfortunate that your lesson was so expensive. I wish you luck in your attempts at getting some reimbursement, however next time be sure to use professional packing materials (sounds like you did-- bubble wrap), leave absolutely zero air space, and plan for several hundred pounds to be sitting on top of whatever you ship.
Given the lack of styrofoam or 0ther internal support in the boxes, I'd say it doesn't look intentional at all.
See waht happens when you put, say, 500 pounds of weight bearing down on the top of one of those boxes, with no internal support, and then the truck hits some bumps, bouncing the load... so you might get up to 1000 pounds of force on the box for a moment.. hypothetically.
Boxes with the sides split? That's just what happens when the box starts to collapse. In fact, all those pictures show what happens when a box starts to deform.. and boxes deform because they are not packed correctly.
Packed correctly doens't mean 'I added some bubblewrap' either.
Well, if UPS deemed that it was packed properly (as they inspected the package at the PoD), shouldn't they be responsible for the damage?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Packing peanuts are bad news. As packages are bumped, or even dropped, a sufficiently massive object in the package can compress the peanuts on one side, allowing peanuts to fill the resulting cavity on the opposite side. This results in a cavity elsewhere, possibly even leaving NO peanuts between the object and the wall of the box. If bumped in another direction, the object can shift toward that cavity, resulting in a situation where it has no padding.
Since most of the time you've probably thrown away the original styrofoam blocks, here's a way you can simulate them.
Get some small trash bags and a can of triple-expanding spray foam insulation. Place a trash bag in the bottom of the box and partially fill it with the spray foam, so that it's 1/3 to 1/2 as much as you really want. Seal the bag very well with a band of adhesive tape (NOT a twist tie). Place the object on top. Allow the spray foam to reach its full expansion, this may take a while. Do the same at the top, remembering to only use 1/3 to 1/2 of the desired amount. Seal the bag, then close the top. Wait for the top bag to reach full expansion and for the foam to harden. Shake the box to make sure things don't rattle.
The foam-filled bag should reach all 8 corners of the box; you may need to use a small bag in each corner. Don't get the foam on ANYTHING, you will never be able to completely remove it.
Breakable things (as in dishes, not as in computers) should have a layer of bubble wrap to prevent them from knocking against each other, but bubble wrap by itself is insufficient packaging for anything more valuable than a turd.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
I worked for FedEx when this came out.
Fred Smith (The CEO) went rather ballistic, if I remember correctly. Not because the company was shamed or anything, he was legitimately fuming that someone would treat a customer's package that way.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I would think a lawsuit like this is exactly the kind of thing UPS's corporate lawyers would hate to face. Take them to civil court, where the burden of proof is less, and make sure to get a jury trial. Think about it, if you're sitting on a jury and see pictures like these, who are you going to side with? Some multi-billion dollar company that's probably messed up some of your packages, or the poor guy that got his computer stuff deliberately smashed up?
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Truthfully though you have a point, 50% of the server cases I have had shipped have been damaged, usually in route. I mean lets face it if you throw down a box with a flimsy computer case inside something has got to give. The funny thing though is the situation I had about 8 months ago, I ordered the identical case from Onvia.com and Egghead.com (not my favorite vendors, but they had the lowest price at the time). Both cases arrived about 2 days apart, both were severly damaged. However, they were shipped with different companies, FedEx and UPS. At first I thought it was just a coincidence, and my "luck".
Then when I was looking at the shipping labels getting ready to return them to their respective companies, I noticed that they have both been shipped from the same location. (Somewhere in Florida, can't remember the exact address, not that it matters). Come to find out they had both come out of the same warehouse. That seemed rather strange, then it donned on me that the shipping companies were probably not at fault here. The merchandise was damaged before it even left the warehouse. Anyhow, I contacted the warehouse after some digging and explained the situation further, (gave them my case model number: Antec SX1030) and asked them to check into it. They later contacted me and explained that one of their forklift drivers had accidentally backed into a pallet full of these cases, but had not reported it to their superior, so not knowing anything was really wrong (even though the cardboard boxes they came in looked pretty mangled to me) they had proceeded to ship that damaged goods, at least that was their story.
Long story short, I got my money back and UPS and FedEx were both exonerated.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Put, in huge letters, ANTHRAX across your box. You'll have it personally delivered by the FBI.
Of course, they may deliver your ass to jail.
And then I can gurantee you either get damaged on the way there, or on arrival.
I agree wholeheartedly.. Avoid shipping anything remotely fragile with them if you can help it. However, if you MUST use them, here are some tips.
:)
First off, the packing must be solid. If you can't stand on top of the sealed box and jump up and down on it without breaking it, you haven't packed it well enough. No, I'm NOT kidding. Your package may very well be subjected to just this type of abuse. Even if its handled correctly, there will likely be at minium several hundred pounds of packages stacked on top of it in a tight configuration. If the box gives at all, its going to collapse long before it reaches its destination.
If the box weighs over 70 pounds, its not going to be transported over internal conveyor belts but instead on special irregular carts. This has the potential to expose the package to a number of other abuses, but its less likely to suffer any extreme falls or belt jams and will also likely not have any packages stacked on top of it as the irregulars are typically loaded last.
If you use wooden crates to send something, the crates will probably fall apart in the shipment.
If you use bands to hold the packages together, if the package weighs more than 70 pounds, the bands will likely be used as handles. Don't expect the bands to hold the package together. If the package can't survive without the bands, its probably not going to survive.
And of course, make sure its really insured. UPS only covers $100 of insurance per package unless you purchase more. If you paid for insurance and the package wasn't covered, I'd have words with them. However, they DO investigate insurance claims and can be rather picky about improper packaging.
Good luck.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Never use FedEX to ship jewelry unless it is an emergency and must be there overnight. They won't insure it. Granted, they only have 24 hours to lose it, but if you're shipping $10,000 worth of wedding rings (like I did), it's a real tense 24 hours. Luckily, my homeowner's insurance would have covered it if anything had happened -- but I didn't know it at the time.
-------------------------------------------------
I know you are upset but this is partly your fault. Bubble wrap means nothing and cardboard and bubblewrap does not equate to good packing. How do I know? I worked nights for UPS for 4 years unloading, loading, and sorting customer packages. I currently ship 2-3 packages every day for my wife's home based business.
Check out the Anal Retentive Packer! He gets it mostly right.
http://www.twaze.com/arp/arp.html
So how do you ship a computer by UPS or anyone else and get it there looking good?
1. Hire a pro who knows what they are doing to to pack it using foam fill and other professional toys you don't have at home. The $60 or $70 you would have paid looking not so bad now.
I have to do this on a budget can you teach me to pack like a man? OK.
1. Box in a Box. This is a cardinal rule of packaging. You have an outer container that is reinforced rigid. You can cut sheets of styrofoam for braces which are cheap (Home Depot or Lowes look near the insulation). Provide dead area space or fill with peanuts to the inner container or brace which holds your equipment firmly. Consider shrinkwrap or lightweight plactic trash bag taped around the equipment to keep out dust and smushed packing material. Gateway and Dell usually just use custom fit styrofoam braces in new boxes and that works fine. You may have to improvise here.
2. Use NEW cardboard boxes. If you can afford a killer rig you can afford some new cardboard boxes. At least get ones that are LIKE NEW. The corners should be unbent, not covered in tape, no holes where holes don't belong. The reality is that boxes in poor shape get only get worse during shipping and get less respect by many handlers (not to be mean but if it's hard to pickup because the corners are all soft it's not going to get the best possible handling). Find some Gateway or Dell boxes that your neighbors are tossing after unwrapping the new system.
3. Minimize the time in the system as much as you can afford. Ship 2 day or 3 day service avoiding the lowest common denominator of ground service if you can. Every day in the system is a day exposed to danger. Dell charges you $100 shipping do you think they make much profit on that? They pack well and probably don't make a lot of money on shipping.
4. Make sure you include written shipto, shipfrom, contents list inside the package (both if you paid attention to 1 above).
5. Strap it on the outside securely with heavy duty shipping tape (spend $5,$10 at stapes or your home improvement store).
6. If it's worth $2K or $3K insure it!
Your goal is that you should be able to drop the box 2 feet or kick it hard with a work boot and the contents have a fighting chance. Don't expect sleep deprived college students to baby you package regardless of weather you label it fragile or not.
Your package should NOT rattle or shift weight around when tipped side to side.
Good Luck!
Its sad that if want anyone to take responsibility for their actions you have to threaten them with a lawsuit. Just keeps the courts clogged and lawyers churning out of law schools.
HT
Yah, same here. We had a machine arrive in perfect condition. Nice clean box, not even a scratch. But when we opened it the keyboard inside was crushed with a forklift tire track across it!
man i am soo sorry for your loss but thats what it is, your loss. UPS will and has gone to court over the smallest little thing so as not to pay out. they can and will spend 50 bucks so they won't have to pay out 25. They have an entire team of on staff lawyers (souless bastards that they are) to deal with this kinda stuff. When i worked for them (4 years ago) the employees would always screw arround with the packages, use them as soccer balls ect....
and MY GOSH THE THEFT RATE WAS THROUGH THE F*#KING ROOF!!! we had people stealing whole computers, clothes, jewlry, whatever was arround. Hell we even had an entire Mainframe "go missing" that was sent from IBM, and they fought that one for almost a year. your lucky you even got your computer. still though I would fight the @ssholes.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and a blatant stereotype.
OK, quick. Name a stereotype that's not at least partially grounded in reality.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
My mom's pc fried. She lives in a very rural town in Texas, and I live in Phoenix AZ. So
the usual fix (let's go SHOPPING!) wasn't really
an option this time around.
So anyway, I get her to mail me a hard drive,
and while waiting for it, threw a machine together
(a hella nice machine, my mom's worth it), and
I considered how to ship it back.
I had a whole bunch of options:
take it to the airport and ship it on southwest airlines, fly southwest myself with the pc as luggage, drive (24 hours+ each way),
or ship it by courier. Well, I packed it (pretty well, if I do say so), and took it to the local
Mailboxes Etc. clone. They told me straight up,
to unpack it, and pay them to repack it, or else
(1) it probably would be damaged and
(2) it can't be insured if I pack it.
Shipping was a pretty expensive ticket too. But you know what? I paid. And you know what else?
the package arrived beautifully packed, and 100%
working.
I'd do it again, especially now!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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
Is this a joke?
UPS guys are not know for their industriousness. They're not bad workers by any measuring stick but they don't gen'lly go out of their way to do extra work.
That kind of damage would require a lot of extra work. Do you mean to tell me you shipped a bunch of computers in one box? Are you an idiot?
Fie! I say to this post! Fie!
This
I once had a 5 gallon container of Acrylamide (50% solution) shipped to me via UPS by a chemical manufacturer. Packaged completely according to DOT regulations governing Class B poisons. Acrylamide is highly reactive, can self-react with a large release of heat and buildup of pressure in sealed containers, as well being as a neurotoxin and carcinogen.
UPS LOST THE SHIPMENT! Did they care that there might be 45 lbs of really nasty stuff lying around in one of their warehouses, perhaps dripping on packages of bundt cake being sent to Aunt Tillie? Or toxic dusts caused by the solution drying out into powder and blowing around, possibly into their employees lungs? No way! UPS could not care less.
As a result of this incident and others the company I worked for (a large multinational chemical company) pulled UPS off it's world wide list of approved shippers for hazardous materials. No hazardous products are now allowed to go out of a gate in a UPS truck.
Fedex, though - I never had a problem with shipping hazardous materials - including radioactive samples.
First, what happened sucks. It looks like you did thinks right and UPS screwed you.
I use to work as a manager in the complaints department for a major hotel chain (>3k properties worldwide) and may be able to offer a little insight on getting compensation:
- Have a reasonable claim. This part has been clearly satisfied.
- Ask for reasonable compensation. Try to find someplace that has published replacement prices like Sun Remarketing for the Macs.
- Explain in the simplest terms possible where UPS went wrong.
- Be overly polite. I know this can be really, really difficult but will pay off in the end. If you're rude to them they'll use it as an excuse to deny or delay your claim.
- Document times, dates and names of everyone spoken with at UPS.
- Avoid talking about lawyers and law suits in the beginning. Maybe take the "positive" route and say something like "I'm sure you'll be able to resolve this without me having to call my brother the lawyer." When people said they were going to sue us over minor (under $2k) complaints we knew they were bluffing. If they pissed us off and kept mentioning the threat of suit we would just give them the name of the legal department's contact and tell them to have their lawyer (and only his lawyer) send a letter. On the other hand a lawyer in the family scared us. It was no longer about spending $5k to get $500 back. We really tried to settle the matter, reasonable or not.
- When you don't get satisfaction with the person you're dealing with, thank them for they're time and ask to speak to their supervisor. Explain that the problem is not with them but with the lack of compensation. If the UPS person (especially 1st or 2nd level) thinks you're going to "bad mouth" them along with your damage complaint you'll find it a lot harder to talk to someone higher up. BTW, common trick (at a lot of companies) is to pass of the call to a fellow employee instead of their supervisor. Make sure to get their full name, title and confirm they are in deed a supervisor.
- Keep moving your way up the food chain. Everyone has a supervisor and don't take no for an answer. At some point you'll reach someone that will decide that paying you is less hassle than dealing with you.
- Keep bugging them everyday. Be polite but keep calling. When people did this to us we always gave in (when the complaint and compensation were with in reason). Sometimes they'll try to screen you out so you'll need to get creative. Get phone extentions or, even better, direct lines. Avoid depending on a human to transfer you to the person you're calling. A lot of times they knowingly dump you to voice mail when they hear your name. If this happens just have your girlfriend/wife/sister/mother/whatever call, give a fake name and say they're returning a call. Pass off the phone when you get connected and act dumb if they ask about that "trick". "Social Engineering" skills are a plus here.
We once had a guy call about about one of our hotels in Paris where his wife and kid were staying. The only complaint was the room's AC didn't work and hotel needed two days to fix it (they were sold out and couldn't move the guest). The hotel offered to move them to another (nicer) hotel and pay for two nights or comp two nights and dinners. Very reasonable. This guy bitched and moaned like his family was staying in a POW camp (it was the nicest one of our ~8 properties in the Paris area). He wanted the full stay (~9 nights) AND air fare refunded along with some free nights at a hotel in the US. Everyone thought the same thing: "put the crack pipe down for just a minute." He managed (somehow) to get the president of the company on the the phone. He folded faster than Superman on laundry day and gave this guy everything he wanted.
We also once paid 5 figures for a guest's video of two rats mating in their room (that's the guest's room and not the rat's room) but that's for another time. BTW, if there is an upside to this you did get some extra karma points. =)
Good Luck.
pherris
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I use it to ship all my items I sell on eBay too, and I can do everything myself - including quote rates, create labels and everything all online with no software. Sorry to sound like a commercial, but at least I can go to bed at night knowing my shit is going to show up.
I try to avoid UPS at all costs when I can online, I wish more stores supported it online. Only the big guys do. My 2 cents.
Pat
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
I've actually worked inside 3 seperate UPS hubs as well as doing deliveries and pickups. So, I've seen what happens to a package from the time it gets picked up to the time it's delivered. 1. All packages should be double boxed with packing material in between the boxes. This is probably the best best single piece of advice I can give. You should also include shipping data inside both of the boxes, as well as heavy duty tape to secure the boxes. 2) Don't write "fragile" "sensitive" etc. on the box. This will only serve as a beacon for some disgruntled employee to take out his frustrations on. 3) Get a large typed shipping label made for the package(black type on a white label) that clearly indicates the shipping address. If someone misreads your label, then that means that the package is going to have to go through more handling, increasing the chances of damage. You should also place the label on the side of the box that has the largest surface area.
I had almost the exact same experience (twice) with my systems.
The first time, I used all the original packing material, plus I filled in all of the open spots with packing peanuts. Basically the damage looked identical to the pictures, except that my monitor had a forklift sized whole through the side of it. They replaced the monitor (after about six months) because it was obviously their fault, but they blamed me for incorrectly packing my systems in the original packing. They stated that the system had been shipped in the box ONCE, and so the box was not sturdy enough to handle a second shipment. Each of the pieces of styrofoam was broken at least once, and the inspector said that it looked like it had been dropped on the corner, but that since I didn't pack it correctly, it was my fault. I got a reinspection of the package, and the second inspector said that that much damage couldn't have happened in shipping, and again blamed me. I was never able to get a third inpector, and UPS stated hanging up on me when I called to ask.
So I bit the bullet and bought new systems (luckily the hard drives were salvageable). The next time it came to ship my computers, I went straight to MailBoxes Etc., who promised me that they could pack anything that I wanted to UPS spec, and that if something was wrong, they would pay me directly and then haggle with UPS. Something went wrong. This time, however, UPS again passed the blame to Mailboxes Etc., and the guy from Mailboxes came to my house, took one look at the carton and insurance forms, and basically signed me over a check right there. Still lost the systems, but this time I had the money to replace them even better.
So, I guess the moral of the story is to find someone who will pay when UPS won't, because they never will.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame management. While they are still at fault, ultimately, the monkey moving the box is to blame for the damage. They drop packages (esp. heavy ones.) They throw packages (esp. those marked fragile.) And they even kick packages.
To make a sweeping generalization, the management doesn't care. And the monkeys simply don't give a damn.
And the worst part really is that the computer will someday be a classic! Power Computing!! That was my first computer in college. They sold those for around a year, but boy did I love that computer company.
Long live the clones!! (Speaking of clone wars... Maybe that's where the Star Wars title comes from?)
that's funny... FedEx did just that to me. they left a package on my front doorstep and the signature area said "Front door". i live in Boston. needless to say, I never saw the box again.
but, since they left it, they had to claim liability for it. i was told the shipper files a claim, and the shipper sent me a new order.
As opposed to writing "Fragile" on the box, I wonder what effects "Danger, nuclear waste inside" would be...
-- Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .
If your going to be a dickhead at least attach your name asshole.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
OK, quick. Name a stereotype that's not at least partially grounded in reality.
All aliens are grey-green, speak in metallic tones and always want to be taken to our leaders.
If i'm ever in an alien planet for the first time, i'll tell them to take me to their local version of Hooters, just to leave their scientist puzzled for a while about my race's intelligence. Hmm. Hooters girls. Now that's one stereotype fortunately grounded in reality.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
We have probably 15 or so Dell 2450's and 6350's that were literally destroyed by Fedex. I swear that it looks like they kicked them off the truck going 60mph. I've also had 2 Sun Enterprise 250's arrive without the box on them anymore, just the computer on a pallet with the box and contents missing. Computer equipment and shipping do not mix. If you plan on shipping computer equipment, make damn sure you insure it, because chances are that it won't make it to its destination in one piece.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I've had two recent bubble wrap experiences. Last march I shipped a DLT4000 drive wrapped in about 6" of bubble wrap from MN to CA. When I got to CA, the drive, an old Dec TZ-88 had its metal housing smashed so bad it was bent, and the metal housing on that drive has got to be .125" steel.
The odd thing was that the *box* was totally intact and showed no sign of being opened, crushed or otherwise mangled.
I'm totally at a loss as to what happened to it, it almost seems like it was internal inertia that mangled it because it doesn't seem possible for the damage that drive experienced to happen without the box looking like it had been delivered via howitzer.
I did the same thing again two weeks ago, but this time I wrapped the drive in 12" of bubble wrap (as in the drive plus wrap is now about 32", nearly round) and it survived OK.
I'd like to get some of that plastic and quick setting foam stuff that some things seem to ship with. It looks like you pretty much just spray foam in the box, lay a piece of plastic inside, lay your stuff down, and then lay plastic on top of it and then spray more foam -- totally contoured to match the item and the box.
Somebody fill me in on the history, here. IIRC, UPS started out as a mob front to launder Capone's money. I've also heard that they didn't go public for about sixty or seventy years, because their books wouldn't pass muster for the audit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Thought I'd chime in with the rest of the Slashdot crowd - wow, that sucks.
Now for my brief defense of UPS.
At work we frequently ship at least one RMA'd monitor back and forth each week to Gateway (we're in PA.) These monitors go into cardboard boxes that are very thin with nothing but foam support each end of the monitor.
I have never encountered any shattered monitors or DOA ones that don't work right out of the box. We've never received any calls from Gateway asking where a box might be either. For large 60 pound 17" monitors to travel halfway across the country in thin boxes with barely any protection and survive is amazing.
There are isolated incidents of jackasses in every industry everywhere. There has been a whole lot of generalizing in the discussion about how "every UPS guy" does this. Unfortunately, the number of comments like mine pointing this out seems to be less then people willing to hope on the bandwagon to trash UPS. I'm not denying these things DON'T happen, but I've never encountered any problems in numerous shipments with UPS.
Caveat emperor, insure.
First of all you can short-circuit the runaround. Who did you pay? They are the people you have a contract with, and can therefore sue. The buck goes with the cheque. If they offloaded part of the job to someone else then that is their problem.
Unfortunately this is likely to mean that you are suing the Canadian part rather than the US part, and will thus either have to hire a Canadian lawyer to do it for you or travel back to Canada to actually sue them. OTOH if they are basically the same corporation then you may be able to sue them in the US. There are also likely to be rules about holding hearings at the defendents home address (e.g. wherever their registered office is). This is something to find out about. You may be able to argue that since they are a multinational corporation it makes no difference to them where the hearing is, so it might as well be held where you are.
Secondly, the exclusion of liability clause in their contract is unlikely to cover malicious damage, even if they try to claim it does. And the photos you published do look like malicious damage. That bent phono jack may be the smoking gun here: it looks like someone stuck a screwdriver in there and bent it. There is no way this could have happened by accident. Take a look inside and you might even be able to see the marks left by the screwdriver.
If malicious damage occured then you have a much stronger case for compensation. Details will depend on the relevant laws. Go to a library and find out what they are. Then think about talking to a lawyer.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
It's his fault because he did not buy insurance, and because he used his own boxes. If you are intending to ship a computer, whenever possible, use the ORIGINAL box. I, on the other hand, never intend to ship mine once I have to so I usually ditch the box (until I install overhead storage in my garage I do not have room to keep such things). I bet if he had shipped his mac in it's original box, then it might possible have made it. There's no guarantee, but it masy have had a better chance. The box looked like it may not have even been strong enough to take it. I am not saying the UPS folks are totally absolved, but if you are shipping it and it's valuable, you better ship it in the best box you can find with a HALF TON of stuffing and for gods sake insure it! Styrofoam peanuts don't work. I have had stuff come with that expanding foam in a bag stuff and that would work best if you don't have the original box and styrofoam. It will conform nicely to the curves of any device.
Gorkman
For better protection, spray paint the crate in really bright, catchy colors. I would use yellow/red/black/green/blue spray paint and paint swirls, spots, lines, outline corners and 12 inch tall letters saying FRAGILE.
That's a great idea.
I used to work for a division of Litton, and often had to ship radar displays as rush deliveries for customers whose ships couldn't leave port until the radar was arrived and installed. (It's a safety thing, you wounldn't drive your car on a long trip if windshield wipers and headlights didn't work, would you?)
Imagine a ship, costing $10,000 an hour in crew, port fees, diesel fuel, shore power and water, late penalties from their own customers, waiting for a radar transceiver before they can sail.... and, as I'm sure you can also imagine, radar equipment, while built tougher than consumer electronics, tends to be delicate.
Yes, $10k/hr sounds huge. And it is. To put it in perspective, we're also talking about operating costs of a vehicle with a four-story tall diesel engine.
In my experience, UPS loses stuff. FedEx gets it there, but it's broken when it arrives. And Purolator does either at random. At $10,000/hr, if you want to win brownie points with your customers, you toss the crates into the back of your pickup truck and drive them there.
Finally, looking at the devastation wrought on the poor guy's little server farm there, how did that RCA jack on his video card get bent? It looks suspiciously like something was plugged into it when it was shipped; I can't imagine any other way to obtain sufficient leverage to bend it that far.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Thanks for the details.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Looking at the pictures, those were just standard moving boxes. Most of the time, they don't have the burst strength to ship computer products. I have rarely had problems shipping equipment anywhere becuase I keep the original boxes and shipping materials in storage. You will notice that most of your boxes that computer equipment comes in are much sturdier then your average box from Uhaul. Uhaul boxes are great for clothes, that is about it.
US try this twice and was unable to find Ottawa ! Mayby, last time you will learn how to use a map !
Heh. Since the last time, the 416 has been built, it's four lanes of asphalt with large signs directing you right to Parliament Hill.
A map is no longer required.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
NO, NO, NO. You are right! Don't give up your fight. The reason that insurance exists in the first place is to secure un-replaceable items (i.e. an antique or valueable piece of art that does NOT have a replacement). Unfortunately, insurance has become a means to financially back any old item, at least in the shipping world. I think your packages were mistreated. I'm don't care what methods the shipping company uses to move packages, but by buying their service, you are making an implied agreement that they will get your package from point A to point B UNHARMED! Don't listen to most of these posts, your packages were fine and, again, you were mistreated. Take them to small claims court. SUE! SUE! SUE! Really, I'm appaled and this is completely un-called for.
/. posts get you down, you can win this thing.
Go to the nearest UPS office, or location, talk to a face, not just a voice or a computer. Let them know you are upset! Let, them see your glaring eyes and red face when they tell you, "There's nothing I can do." If you yell loud enough, things will get done. Keep up your fight! Don't let the pessimistic
What has happened to business these days? What ever happened to the "deal" that was based on a handshake? What ever happened to doing business face-to-face?
You can get the Tupperware replaced for free. On the rest good luck.
A friend of mine once had a package shipped from Harrisburg, PA to Lancaster, PA which is about a 30 minute drive, mostly highway. Anyhow, we tracked the package via their website when we were wondering why it did not arrive the next day. Turns out, they shipped it via Massachusetts. Yeah, from PA to PA via MA. That makes NO sense whatsoever.
Robert Sawyer's Calculating God has an Alien landing and asking to be taken to a palentologist.
And don't forget that boxes have six sides. One time someone shipped me a new-in-box Atari 5200 trackball. By shoving it in the bottom of a box with the exact same "floor" dimensions, and filling the rest of the space on top with foam peanuts. Needless to say, when the outside box got a corner scrunched from being dropped, so did the inside box. This is because there was nothing to absorb the impact, so it got transferred directly to the inside box.
As a counter-example, I once shipped a new-in-box rare (but sucky) old game system to someone. I packed it in a box that was at least four inches longer in all three dimensions, filled the bottom with foam peanuts, put the box I was shipping inside, filled around the edges with more peanuts, then filled it to the top.
As a final comment, have you ever noticed how boxes (at least the ones made and sold in the USA) have this circle with lots of words and numbers in it? That gives the strength rating of the box. From what I understand, this guy shipped two computers and a monitor in the same box! Which was probably a normal-strength box. I'm sorry, but first, no amount of foam peanuts is going to stop such items from banging into each other, and second, the weight of two tower computers and a decent sized monitor has to be on the order of at least 60 pounds/30 kilos. No way is a regular cardboard box going to retain its shape when it's being knocked around during shipping. He might as well have wrapped it in tissue paper for all that it mattered.
And, as mentioned before, if it wasn't filled tightly, stacking of boxes would have crushed it, and cardboard tends to lose its strength after being crushed. I'm sure the square-cube law has an effect here, too. A box two feet on a side, with the same relative thickness of cardboard, is going to be relatively only 1/8th as strong as a box with one foot long sides. And that's the same relative thickness. Which means thicker than the smaller box's cardboard, not the same thickness, as this would have been.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
An old friend of mine worked for UPS for a couple years, and he had similar stories of package destruction. He said they'd commonly build up a wall of boxes as they came in, to conserve space in the warehouse. When it was time to load the trucks, someone would come by yelling "tear 'em down!" and they'd knock the whole wall down.
If you had a fragile box that happened to be at the top of one of their walls, good luck.
He also said there were definitely issues with theft of packages - although he agreed that UPS did have pretty good policies in place to try and prevent it. He said the boxes that were labeled prominently as to their contents were at the highest risk. (That's why many companies like CDW ship boxes packed inside a plain-looking outer box. It's more tempting for someone to steal an item shipped in a pretty box with color photos of the product on the front.)
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.
The monitors that I did this with were from an Apple ][, a C=64 and a Bannana 2000 (ok, it was a Mac 128).
The first two use an RCA plug as input. Now I am not sure if there is a better way to do this with those monitors, but I am not aware of one.
The Mac of course has a built-in monitor and there is no imput.
I haven't tried this on any newer monitors other than the color one that started smoking. However, I am not sure if simply soldering something to the h and v lines would do the trick or not. How 'bout you try it and let us all know? I would certainly be interested.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I doubt it was still in the building - 5 finger discount and all.
We used DHL for a while to ship computers between offices. Then they figured out what we were shipping, and they stopped showing up.
We switched to FEDEX then.
I've never shipped large quantities of books, as I'm anal retentive, so I'd rather just do the drive myself. [luckily, I packed the trailer well enough that even with the fact that I managed to roll it, I didn't even even break any of the lightbulbs in there]
Okay, so that's a bad way to start off moving advice, but anyway... paper comes in boxes of a certain size. Anything larger than that stuffed with paper products is just asking for trouble. And those don't handle abuse well, so you can't just use 'em directly unless you're using them for your personal packing/moving.
There is, however, one advantage to using normal paper boxes... the tops of the boxes are loose, so you can crush the size of the box down to perfectly fit the size of the contents. With a normal box, you'll want to slit the sides (carefully, so that you can enlarge the flaps), and make sure the books have no wiggle room in them.
If you're looking for more book shipping tips...try asking someone who's ordered a large shipment from Amazon. [but remember...lots of small boxes are better than fewer large boxes]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Our office recieves several (>20) packages a week, most shipped via UPS. At the end of the fiscal year, that number is comprised by ~50% new computer systems. The boxes haven't a flaw on them.
I can only surmise that your experience is far outside the norm. You probably ride out at the 99th percentile of problem shipments. I don't know what your shipment looked like before, but your packing seems to have been a little light for such a valuable item.
As for the other UPS bashers on this thread, I guess you are too young to remember the days before UPS. Most packages arrived via the USPS and had approximately the same damage rate. The difference between before and after UPS is:
1) UPS delivers the boxes to your door - the Postal Service doesn't (and didn't).
2) UPS delivers faster now than the USPS ever did when it controlled nearly all non-industrial package shipments.
If you think that FedEx is any better, you might want to compare the volume of packages shipping through the two respective companies. Comparing UPS to FedEx or Airborne is not apples to apples.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I recently shipped some valuable art via UPS and had a long discussion with the woman at the counter about the vagaries of the UPS system. What is important here is that UPS ground involves lots of conveyor belt transfers. Packages must be able to withstand an 18" drop. They also undergo considerable "grinding" as discussed above. The solution is to ship 2nd day air. This drastically reduces the amount of handling the package receives. For even more precious cargo use Next Day Air -- then it is basically hand-delivered. I know these options are more expensive, but consider them a form of insurance. In my case UPS insured my packages for $2500 each, but required that I ship 2nd Day Air. When I buy computers mail order they always come 2nd Day. Now I think I understand why.
Any time you have to transport a piece of electronic gear, it's MUCH easier (and safer) if you still have the original packing material. At the very least, you should be keeping the original packaging for the duration of the warranty -- it makes getting warranty service a whole lot easier. I got into the habit of keeping boxes when I was in the military and was moving around a lot. It may be a bit of a pain to store the boxes, but my stereo equipment has survived 5 major cross-country moves (and several more shorter ones) without a single scratch.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I had a clueless luser ship me a computer in a paper box. No, really.
It was a desktop model, and they put it in a copier paper box. It didn't exactly fit, so they put it in at an angle, and sort of taped around the lid of the box, which wasn't all the way on. Padding? There wasn't room for any padding. Besides, it was such a tight fit, the computer wasn't going to bounce around any, so why would it need padding?
The Emery guy didn't even leave it in the mailroom. He came directly to the computer area, gingerly carrying the box and a damage form. Four of the box's seams had sprung, leaving basically a big wide loop of cardboard around an otherwise-naked computer.
The punchline is, the case wasn't even scratched, so I told the guy not to get worried yet, and grabbed a spare monitor and keyboard and booted the puppy up... and it was perfectly fine. Apparently all the handlers just felt so sorry for the poor thing that they were actually gentle with it.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
I know I'm posting late, but let me add my tale of woe to any others who also read slashdot a few days late...
I shipped my computer (Mac 4400 - actually, I wasn't that sorry to see that POS go) UPS Ground coming home for the summer over my sophmore year of college. Fortunately, I didn't really need my computer much that summer, but I sure would have if was at school. Cracked the motherboard, but managed not to damage anything else. The box looked pretty similar to the author's box, but I didn't think anything of it 'cause it was the original box with like 3" of hard foam padding. I actually had insured it for about 1.5x what it was worth, and they amazingly where fairly straightforward about paying for it too. Went to a computer shop, got them to say "yes, it's fuxord" and then even kept the hard drive, which would have been the only thing they could have salvaged for any real cash.
Aftermath: Bought a Mac B&W G3, and have carried it on board the plane with me whenever I fly. The handles come in real handy, I attached a strap form an old soccer bag and it works like a large purse. Plus, started up several conversations with people about my "luggable". Bought a cheap 17" for use at home, and now that I'm out of school, I've got both monitors (I actually drove the last time, so I strapped my comptuer and monitor in my passenger seat) set up side-by-side. Scary thing is I've only gotten stopped once by security, but I haven't flown with it in almost a year.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
I live in Canada, so my experiences are probably different than any of the Merkins around here.
UPS: These guys really suck nasty ass when you live in eastern Canada. They don't actaually operate here. It gets passed on to Sameday (Someday) courier. I bought a laptop from Egghead which took a month to get here. There is no such thing as "air shipping" around here as far as UPS is concerned, even though their major call center is in New Brunswick. Worse than that, they pull a "Microsoft" by making their customers (including Matrix Orbital, sigh) sign a contract forcing them to use only UPS, even though the customers pay for it. I have tried numerous times to use Fedex or Purolator, to no avail. Even USPS is way better, IMO.
Fedex: No trouble. No problems. I have never had trouble with these guys. I recommend them if you're Canadian.
Purolator: Yes and no, mostly yes. They're really quick, even with the cheap rates. I was totally surprised at first that I was getting next day service without expecting it. My brother used to work for them, so I always used to get my packages directly from him. He'd sign and give it to me later, saving me a lot of trouble (I was in school or at work in the daytime). I buy a lot of stuff from DigiKey, who publishes a Canadian catalog (and a very cool website) with duties and GST included in the prices. They use Purolator by default if you're in Canada. They handle the GST themselves. That is truly cool, for a company based in Thief River Falls, MN, USA. Stuff comes in record time, even with the cheap rates. On the other hand, they destroyed a VA Linux server on us (my company), that was enclosed in a custom shock-mounted case we had made for us (demo server). They paid us fully what we originally paid for it and gave us a formal apology. That's very cool, IMO.
Fedex: Never a problem. "Overnight" shipping takes 2 days, instead of one, when ordering from the States. I just paid CAN$200 for SuSE 7.3 in this situation... Damn duties. I am relatively happy, though. This probably has a lot to do with how impressed I am with 7.3 (released on FTP today, in case you were wondering why the mirror sites were slow as hell, and probably still are).
Canada Post: Believe it or not, I am happy with the service. They are much cheaper than anybody else, and I just today recieved a shipment from BC (I'm in Halifax) that was sent out yesterday. Bravo. Crown corporations *do* work.
That's just my experience. Some of you probably have different experiences. Maybe it's like hard drives, where everybody has *one* brand they refuse to buy, based on past experiences. (I have 2: Western Digital and Maxtor, ugh)
Shipping animal waste this way is seriously illegal. You dad could have gone to prison. Anybody who got caught pulling this stunt after 9-11 probably would go to prison.
This is illegal because it's dangerous. People who never did anything to your dad could have been harmed.
Who do you think went around smelling of deer piss for a month? Not the managers whose decision-making screwed your dad over. Not the stockholders who profit from those decision. The people he ended up punishing were the ordinary, hard-working, underpaid people who do the actual work. Where's the justice in that?
I find it interesting that there not only seems to be a lot of UPS horror stories on this thread, but also that there seems to be a distinct lack of either Fedex or USPS horror stories. Quite telling. Conspicuous by its absence.
Let me get this straight: You put a Powermac G4 tower, an PowerTower Pro, and a monitor all in one box, and expected them to survive?
As he pointed out elsewhere on this thread, no, he didn't. He packed each of them into three separate boxes.
As for insurance, it was not available to him as an option.
Lastly, the packing WAS inspected by UPS before he shipped, and UPS accepted the packing.
And you get modded up to 5 for posting a bunch of incorrect assumptions that you made?
I understand that UPS US has a pretty good reputation, and UPS Canada doesn't have a bad reputation, that I know of. I'm guessing that the two companies hate each others' guts, or something.
The upshot is that I (alongg with just about anybody who read that thread) now specifically warn anybody who ships something from the states that They should not use UPS under any circumstances whatsoever.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
That said, I posted this comment because I was asked to provide a description of what I had done. It actually sparked a bit of discussion and I recieved quite a few emails about this project.
The comment started out as a 2. I didn't expect it to get modded up since it says in the subject line that it is off-topic. Because it was and interesting post though it got modded up to a 4. I thought that was overrated and so did someone else since they quickly modded it down as overrated. Fine. Then there was an off-topic mod leaving it at 2. Also fine. I admitted it was off topic to begin with.
What annoys me is the second OT mod. I am going to repeat myself here: The post was obivously interesting to quite a few people. It generated more of a response than anything I've ever posted before. I ADMITTED that it was OT in the subject line. If someone didn't want to read it, fine, they could easily see that it was OT. However, it was also interesting and something worth sharing. Having it rated higher allowed it to be shared with more people.
The second person to mod it as ot is a lemming, pure and simple! I can read their mind, "Must use mod points!"
Am I taking this too seiously? Yes.
End Of Rant.
Lasers Controlled Games!