FedEx, and HELL VTL to the rescue

Well Good for you!
You are a very very lucky man, that dont usually happen.
Its a little different in Canada, FEDEX/UPS will not insure personal goods when they are shipped out of Canada, they will insure it and you pay for it believe it or not, but if it gets lost, you are on your own. Silly but true.

I believe UPS is far better here in Canada in my experiences. I have heard excellent things about FEDEX from the US mainly so.........no complaints yet! They have bad brokers here thats all in my town.
They have too many brokers here to do thier work depending where you are located in Canada.

I onced ordered a Classe Omega Preamplifier from the US, private sale. I insisted on UPS, When it got here, there was a small puncture in the box, thinking it was no big deal and accepted the unit as it is. Guess what, the $500 aluminum remote handset was missing! Was I pissed!

Called up UPS and explained and also contacted the seller.
He said he will try to see what can be done.
Anyway the Broker for UPS at my town, Newfoundland, Canada knows me well since I do buy and sell quite a bit and a day later, I called the broker as well and explained the situation, the broker boys were nice enought to call Moncton in New Brunswick (a close province to Newfoundland Canada) and god know some how tracked something down and called me 2 days later and told me, hey we found something, "looks like a fancy cell phone and its god damn heavy" must have dropped of somewhere and send it down to the closest branch and there it was, with its own box/packaging and seal "Classe" and I got it back by word of mouth............. I have never stoped using UPS ever since!
Never had any problems ever yet with them so.........thought I should share this! Cheers

Jtinn, thanks for sharing the story. Now we can all remember this as another possibility when dealing with Fedex. I agree with Mattybumpkin, thanks should also go the Fedex woman. How about 2 nice boxes of chocolate to the ladies? That would set precedence for the future. Fedex will still be around and some of us will continue having to deal with them.

Nice story but it still doesn't make me feel any better about the Vintage Kenwood 9100 amp that was lost/stolen by Fedex last week. Completely restored and insured for shipment at $500, Fedex only paid out $175 because that's what the Orion book said it was worth. Funny, they didn't have any problem taking my money when it came time to insuring it.

Danamc, sorry about your loss, but I can certainly understand the shipper's policy of not overpaying on overinsured items. If the customer wants to buy insurance at 3X the book value you can't expect the shipper to check or dispute that when the purchase is made, only when a claim gets filed. Otherwise, where's the limit? Far be it from me to side with a shipper who screws up your package and sale, but somebody could take out $1,000 insurance on a $50 item if they wanted, however collecting on that would constitute a scam. I don't know if there's any way around this connundrum when shipping a piece that's been upgraded beyond book value.

All this makes me feel well justified for taking 30 hours and driving the 1,000 miles round-trip, spending for the gas and overnight hotel instead of shipping and insurance, when I bought my VTL monoblocks from an Agonner in Atlanta. And then for packing the amps in the van when we took a cross-country road trip summer before last, so I could personally bring them to Bea at the factory for updates while we were staying with relatives in LA. I dig driving, saving money, and peace of mind.