Problems with U.P.S.

I had loudspeakers shipped from Europe to the East Cost with 2nd Day delivery option: - first time, the boxes disappeared (no one could tell us what happens) - second time, one of the box and its content was damaged. On top of this, UPS was not dealing in a fair and efficient way with this!

0 UPS shipments in 2000 = 0 problems. 1 UPS shipment in 1999 = 1 problem. 3 UPS shipments in 1998 = 2 problems. 1989 - 1997 had several problems (mainly with packages shipped to us). If you're not willing to double box and quadruple pack your hifi before sending it, you shouldn't use a ground service. BTW, "but that's the box it came in" is a very poor excuse.

Another damaged item arrived via UPS (ground) today (Marantz receiver). Our driver is great, but we can pass on the rest of the company.

Good point Brian. Our driver is also great and a decent golfer too :-). However the rest of the company is difficult to call even decent. My company has employees in 6 states all on a contract engineering or IT job. All they want is their paychecks on time. We stopped using UPS when each week one at least one of 20 someodd payroll packages would be "lost". We now use fed-ex 2nd day service and have had zero problems since. I have much more to do that track payroll packages that I should not even have to think about again.

Reading review of new Infinity speaker in May 2000 Stereophile. Reviewer says."FEDEX drop-kicked the speaker" completetly dastroying the low bass driver. Read review.