[Hallicrafters] All Shipping Has Risk, No Exceptions!

[GARDGORE at aol.com]

I have been involved in the old radio game for enough years now to make some 
generalizations about shipping. For rare or valuable items or for stuff that 
is heavy enough to commit suicide in a box without exception I just get in 
the car and go get it if I want to be sure it gets here OK. Is this fun? 
Hardly!!! Like you would not, I don't enjoy it either. I would much rather be 
doing something around here than driving all over the place. I also don't 
enjoy doing bodywork on something like an SX-88 or NCX-1000 for the next 
month or so either that will never be the same again afterwards. From 
practical experience I have observed the following are true in most cases:

1) Cashing your check is higher on the sellers list than what condition you 
receive your item in. The thing you are buying is something he is in a hurry 
to get rid of.
2) Most sellers feel they know much more about packing than you do and 
efforts at trying to get them to pack something a certain way are mostly a 
waste of time.
3) Most sellers don't know enough about what they have to pack it properly 
anyway.
4) The box will get dropped. I have observed UPS delivering at our place 
before. The "always in too much of a hurry" driver throws open the back door, 
jumps up in the back of his overstuffed truck and tosses stuff that is for us 
out onto the pavement. Four feet anyone?
5) If something has heavy transformers mounted on a relatively thin gauge 
chassis they will tear themselves away from their mountings when UPS drops 
the box.
6) If something has a large glass dial scale or dial cover it will arrive 
with the glass broken. The glass shards will have killed everything else too.
7) If the seller packed with styrofoam peanuts as his primary line of defense 
the radio will head for the bottom of the box where the cabinet will be 
vulnerable to a direct hit. Ever open a box and wonder why the seller put all 
the peanuts on top?
8) If your seller likes crumpled newspaper for his primary packing material 
you will have a battering ram in a box by the time you get it.
9) If just one tube manages to shake out of its socket it will kill 
everything inside.
10) Many radios get put in the box and shipped upside down. If the rear 
chassis screws were inadvertently left out after a previous repair the front 
panel will get buckled when they drop the box.
11) If the front panel is not sufficiently padded the delicate mechanisms 
behind will be jammed when they drop the box on that side. Some knobs can 
transfer a lot of bending force because of their large surface area.
12) When complaining to the seller about shipping damage they will usually 
act very surprised and claim, "I have been shipping like that for 25 years 
and you are the first one..., must be some kind of a local problem."
13) Insurance is no insurance most of the time. You just get on a list to go 
through an endless cycle of unreturned phone calls and visiting adjusters 
that refer you to other adjusters. This is their cost control through your 
inconvenience.
14) What good does it do to file a claim on a Breting 14 anyway? You really 
just wanted the Breting 14!  Filing an insurance claim is little consolation.
15) I don't mean to exclude FedEx and USPS. It is just that UPS is at the top 
of the list for this most of the time.
16) The above mostly applies to list members that are attempting to buy 
things and get them home safely.

Greg