USPS Incredibly bad.

[almar]

I ordered some 45/70 dies from midway and it stalled for 10 days marked as "awaiting package". All of a sudden it shows up on my doorstep horribly mangled. Dies are usually secure, in their box, but these were loose in the box and banged up so bad they look like they were put in a tumbler with dirt and rocks. This has to be one of the worst from USPS i have ever experienced. Good grief, what in the world happened?

[Dusty Bannister]

Looks like a heavy product with light weight packing. Inform Midway of lack of damaged contents. Not the first time this has happened.

[gmsharps]

What has Midway said about this? Looks like Midway used airbags as a cushion. When the Redding box came open, I'll bet the decapping pin punctured the air bags. I think both parties were at fault. Midway for using to large of a box and the post office for banging the box around. In the USPS defense I think the box being too large and possibly being around heavier boxes crushed the partially filled box. Think of all the boxes being shipped at a time. Just my 2 cents worth.

gmsharps

[NSB]

It’s a very poorly packaged box. I can’t fault USPS for this one, it’s all on Midway.

[Shawlerbrook]

Agreed, bad packaging. Would be surprised if Midway doesn’t make it right.

[lightman]

I would call Midway and see what they will do.

[gwpercle]

My package was delivered and it looked like it had been run over by a truck ...
there were tire tread marks on the box !!!
Several things inside were crushed ... I called the sender and reported damage .
They replaced everything and I'm sure USPS took a hit on senders insurance claim ...
But I don't expect much from a company that looses 8 or 9 billion dollars each year ...
If I had run my business like that I would have had a business for 3 months at best !
Gary

[rockrat]

I had an empty box delivered one time. All taped up with "Warning--package damage--check contents" tape. What contents?? Also had tire tracks on the box.

[Springfield]

I have been shipping leather goods for the last 15 years and the USPS hasn't damaged one package yet. Heavier lead packages, coming and going, don't fare so well, but none of the contents have been lost.
People forget that all these packages get piled on top of one another, and if all you have is a couple of air bags inside, your box is going to get squeezed or crushed. I have shipped dies and moulds to people and I also tape up the box or tape the halves together so it can't come open, just takes a second.

[imashooter2]

Midway ships a lot of packages. They pack them quick and cheap. If one in a thousand arrive damaged, they save money on the replacement vs. spending the time to pack them right.

[Handloader109]

ALL on Midway. Not on USPS and I'd bet that none of these carriers have claims from any major businesses. Just the cost of doing business. I would give Midway a shout. You have to over package a lot of items....

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[Electrod47]

A lot of vandalism and theft of packages lately on the open road. See LA's "Canyon of Filth" Or the kid that worked for Fedex and just threw his load in a ditch. May have been pilfered and just stuffed back together and put back on its way.

[Streetwalker]

My wife and I live in a relatively remote section of California so we order a lot of our goods via the internet. It always amazes me how many times a small item will arrive in a parcel that that is way to big for it and the item rattles around inside the parcel like a BB in a boxcar. Kudo's to the USPS though..they haven't busted up a parcel yet, unlike UPS!

[skrapyard628]

USPS did me great yesterday by stuffing the box with the wood rifle stock I ordered into a snow bank next to my patio. It was warm enough that the snow was melting, so, by the time I got home from work the water had soaked through the box and the stock was wet. They could have left the box on my COVERED patio. But no....stuffing it in a pile of melting snow was a better idea for them.

[ryanmattes]

My wife and I live in a relatively remote section of California so we order a lot of our goods via the internet. It always amazes me how many times a small item will arrive in a parcel that that is way to big for it and the item rattles around inside the parcel like a BB in a boxcar. Kudo's to the USPS though..they haven't busted up a parcel yet, unlike UPS!

For places that ship a lot, they negotiate bulk rate pricing for specific box sizes, usually only 3-4 sizes. If your order is slightly too large for the small box, it goes in the medium, even if that's way too big.

The carriers give them a deal because it's easier to plan a truck load knowing what the box sizes are going to be and the approximate volume of each. If you guarantee this many boxes of these sizes per day, they can plan their trucking more efficiently.

The inevitable consequence is that not only does some stuff have to move up to a large box because it's just a bit too big for the medium box, but on a busy shipping day, if they run out of one size box, it's cheaper to just move up to the bigger box size than to stop the shipping guys down while they get more boxes.

I worked shipping and receiving in high school, for a while at Guitar Center and for a while at an electronics refurbisher. Both were expensive, delicate products. I never shipped a box that rattled or shifted, or couldn't handle a large speaker cabinet or power amplifier sitting on top of it without being crushed. But I also only packed 30-40 a day, and these days shippers at places like Amazon are doing 300-400 a day.

It's not an excuse for bad service, but it's a reason that **** happens.

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[MaryB]

Poor packing. I have been packing and shipping 30+ pound antique radios for years. I make hard foam blocks that suspend them in the box then that goes in another box with 2" of foam board around the inner box. Double boxed, the 3-4 inches of space to the radio protects against punctures... I have had boxes arrive at the buyer mangled. They send pics all worried then get to the inner box and inner foam and find a perfect radio. In 30 years 1 radio was damaged and it had been run over, there were dually tire tracks over the top of the box and it was crushed to 3 inches tall(was 18 inches when I sent it...). Filed a claim with USPS, they denied it, sued in small claims, they never showed and I got a summary judgement for double the radio cost, my wasted time... it was an irreplaceable radio unfortunately, one of the rare ones you find once in a lifetime. A Hallicrafters SX-88 I debated keeping for myself but it was a $5,000 radio and I had just become disabled and had medical bills eating me alive. I picked it u for $600, spent $1200 on restoration... I didn't want to ship it, guy lived 4 hours away and could have driven... he lost out, I ended up okay after a year of bull from USPS...

[alamogunr]

Back a year or so ago I ordered a turret for a Redding T7 from Brownell's. All I got was an empty box. One end had a torn opening about the size of the turret. There was a couple of those plastic air bags still in the box. It was obvious that the box was too big, the packing did not prevent the contents(turret) from excess movement and the turret being much smaller than the box allowed it to punch it's way out of the box.

I texted Brownell's with pictures of the box. My text included a few choice words about packing. They replaced the turret without comment. I've received a mold in a box without packing and the halves not secured together. I had to eat that one as the seller would not respond. This happened more than 15 years ago.

[LenH]

I ordered some bullets from a guy that builds Bullseye guns. I was getting 2K at a time and was very well packed MFR box. I got a box once several years ago that looked like a flat basketball
all of the bullets were intact because the guy that shipped it had it taped together so well but it looked like there was a competition by the postal workers to see who could drop
that box the farthest. The boxes inside the box were beat all to heck and back and wound up having to spill the bullets in nut containers from Sam's.

[megasupermagnum]

Those green bags used to be filled full of air. I don't see how they could have possibly been all popped like that without that box being run over. That's definitely not Midways fault, but I'd contact them first anyway. They are way easier to deal with than the USPS.

[fatelk]

Photos of damage like that make me feel vindicated for being a bit of an over-the-top packer. Anytime I ship something I package it like I expect it to fall out of a truck at full speed. So far I've never had anything damaged in shipping.

Mary, you sound like you pack very carefully also. My wife sometimes makes fun of me for spending so much time making it "bomb-proof", but it does work! A good friend of mine also collects and works on old radios, has a shop full of them. Pretty cool. I once found what I thought was a great find at an estate sale, an old console tube radio in nice condition, asking price something like $100. I texted him a photo of it. He replied that it was a common model but still a decent price if he didn't already have one.

Back to the original thread- I'd be surprised if Midway didn't take care of you. You'll probably end up with a nice new set of dies, and the bedraggled, but I assume usable, damaged set.