[BC] UPS Damaged Goods

[ChuxGarage@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/14/2007 12:00:50 A.M. Central Daylight Time,  
broadcast-request at radiolists.net writes:

Yes, I  shipped a set of STL's back to the factory for service/upgrade and
used the  original boxes.  I was told that that wasn't good enough -- they
had  to be double-boxed.



In my previous life as a pro-audio dealer, I got to eat a $6000 (dealer  
cost) Yamaha console courtesy of UPS.  I'd sold it to a church and after  nearly a 
year, a couple of the switches had developed a crackling sound.   We could 
have replaced the offending switches in our own shop, but it  seemed like a 
better idea to return it to Yamaha so all the similar switches  could be changed 
out under warranty.  Yamaha was more than willing to do  that.  Being a nice 
guy, I volunteered to send it back to Yamaha  in California for warranty repair 
while the church was on summer  break. We packed it in the original Yamaha 
shipping carton which had made it  from Japan to Dallas with no problems a year 
earlier.
 
After a couple of weeks I decided to call Yamaha repair to see what kind of  
progress they were making.  The service tech said something like, "Is that  
the one that is all smashed on one end?  You don't expect us to warranty  that, 
do you?"  The conversation went down hill from there.  
 
It seems that USP totally destroyed the console.  When we got it back,  it 
looked like it had fallen 40 or 50 feet.  My guess is it fell off a  conveyor 
belt while being loaded in a cargo plane.  UPS never offered any  explanation 
and denied the claim telling us that it was "Improperly  packaged."  After a 
long and expensive battle, UPS agreed to refund our  shipping costs. Whoopie.  
They were fully prepared to go to court over the  matter.  Our attorney told us 
that we'd probably win, but the legal  expenses would be greater than the 
value of the merchandise. 
 
We'd been a decent UPS customer for well over 20 years, doing roughly  
$400-500 per week with them.  This incident caused me to switch to FedEx  Ground, 
which I soon found to be far superior, cheaper and very easy to deal  with.  We 
very seldom ever had a claim with FedEx but on the occasions that  we did, 
they usually settled within a week or so.  UPS at best was a couple  of months.  
 
The story did turn out OK though. Our Yamaha factory representative had  some 
"slush fund" money in his rep account, so he volunteered to split the cost  
of a replacement console for the church.  I thought that was going above  and 
beyond on his part.  It's always nice to do business with people who  want to 
do the right thing.  I never ship anything UPS....
 
Chuck  Conrad
KZQX Radio
_www.kzqx.com_ (http://www.kzqx.com/)  



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