UPS ??? Do they ever pay a claim???

Several years ago I purchased a used pair of Thiel 3.5
speakers from a dealer out of state. UPS delivered them
with one of the speaker grills broken. I filed a claim,
and got the typical runaround for several weeks, finally
an inspector came to the house to inspect the damage
and I ultimately was reimbursed. However, it wasn't easy
or user-friendly.

Bamafan, NEVER ship just in the factory packaging, always put that inside another NEW box with at least 2" of insulation all around. The reason I say this: I once shipped a CAL cd player in its original factory packaging (which was very good, btw). It was damaged and ups refused the claim, saying that they would not insure reused boxes. I got the last laugh, though. I told them to send it back to me, and they lost it on the return trip! They paid full retail immediately, since I had it insured for that. I never ship components now without putting them in a second (new) box. At least it takes one excuse away from them.

Karls, I am going by what UPS told me is required to get them to honor a claim. Am passing on what I was told by a senior person at UPS.

Pretender, if these truly are "large" speakers, i would check into going motor freight. You will have better luck using that method than you would with UPS. While i'm not saying that they are the best out there, i have had very good luck over the years using Overnite Express. Their prices were lower than any of "the big three" i.e. Roadway, Consolidated Freightways, Yellow. This is probably due to the fact that most Overnite terminals are non-union, do there is less overhead involved. The shipments that i've sent through Overnite were also delivered in a more timely fashion and arrived in better shape. Since it is a non-union company, employees that slack-off or get caught handling shipments roughly or damaging property will get fired, not just reprimanded with a letter.

One other suggestion and this applies to anyone shipping speakers. Speaker terminals should be "shunted" or "shorted" together. By this i mean using a low value resistor ( 2 - 8 ohms ) connected from the positive to negative binding posts of the speaker. If you don't have access to something like this ( Radio Shack has them and you don't need anything bigger than a 1/4 to 1/2 watt ), you can use a piece of small gauge wire instead but the resistor is preferred.

What this does is "lock" the voice coils of the drivers in place. This greatly reduces the amount of movement or "throw" that the driver can make. It is being held in place by the natural magnetic field within the driver itself. This minimizes the potential for damage since the driver won't be allowed to "bottom out" or "over throw" if the package is dropped or shipped upside down, sideways, etc... The resistor absorbs any voltage generated by the driver, which WILL end up moving a little bit no matter what. It is one of those "ounce of prevention" type of deals... Sean
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