what can reasonably be expected of a seller?

i can tell you of several horror stories i have experienced with shipping issues, sellers and packaging issueswith electronic equipment.
1.  unit was in a high end motorhome that had a fire, units have some smoke damage, but functional... ya right... got both units and when opened up they looked like there was a thermonuclear event contained within the case.. probably what caused the motorhome fire!
2.  such poor packaging that one of the inverter units was hanging half out the corner of the carton/box the main unit was shipped in.
3. my favorite...  a $10k inverter system, well packaged,  i witness the fedex driver show up at my house, walk to the back of the truck, slide open the door, climb in and pitch the box out onto the pavement, clearly about 6ft at the apex of trajectory before slamming down on the asphalt, flat on the bottom.... i was horrified!  and of course chewed the driver up so bad that from then on she would come to my door with packages carefully in hand to personally hand them to me...   thanks to the sellers overly careful packaging, the unit was not damaged and worked just fine.
my thinking now, that i am on fixed income and not making as much as i did back then, if i want to buy something of serious value, i am going to buy a plane ticket is need be to personally inspect and test before i buy it, then i will package it for shipping myself!
bob g

I think it's sad that nowadays, one has to be careful not to get screwed over. It would never occur to me to do that to someone else. Anyone I've dealt with has been of the same mind. I guess I've been lucky so far. 

One time I had a CDP for sale and I was (as always) meticulous in it's care and storage. It looked brand new and a couple of times I'd check it out to make sure it worked, and to make sure I really wanted to sell it.

When I got an offer I had almost packed it when it occurred to me to try it out one more time. One channel was inexplicably dead and I could never get it to work. I expect anyone I deal with to do the same for me.
But then, that's me.

All the best,
Nonoise

That's funny! I had similar experiences with Fedex around here some time ago. 

For awhile, (I was working downtown), I began to notice that most Fedex drivers would drop, throw, slam packages for seemingly no reason, while UPS treated them like...packages?


When I used to visit another forum, many had the same experiences, but with different carriers, sometime just the opposite experience. 


The issues don't seem to be carrier related, but regional. Sometimes even down to an individual. 


But, WHY a human in better than average shape would want to drop or toss a box is indeed strange. 

If you have worries why buy ? As for NOS and new stuff or even used gear claimed to be fully operational but seller refuses to answer to your questions and requests and so you think you have doubts about seller´s honesty ? Go elsewhere.