Got a couple 7000 plug-ins in the mail

[FrankenPC]

In my ongoing quest to build a classic 7000 series mainframe, I ordered a 7B80 and 7B85 timebase set from Ebay seller: ssscottt (not  SIC). 

I received the package and cut it open and this is what I saw.  I swear.  This is not doctored.




...

A crumpled up map.  An empty water bottle.  And an empty cracker box.

I mean, it pissed me off obviously.  But I have to laugh.

 

[SeanB]

Decent double layer box though, those are pretty good as packing protection on their own. More importantly do the plugins work correctly.

[retiredcaps]

Someone in Canada shipped me a multimeter wrapped in just saran wrap.    He charged me $20 for the privilege as well. 

Luckily the meter survived.

[Shock]

Could have been a 5c refund on that plastic bottle He is not maximizing his profit.

[XOIIO]

Dude, you got a free water bottle and map, why are you complaining? You are all set to go hiking! 

[Joule Thief]

Same here .

Had a pristine condition Tek 465 scope shipped in a double wall cardboard box, all kinds of bubble wrap around the SIDES of the scope - no bubble wrap on the FRONT where all the controls knobs project out from the front of the scope.

You guessed it. The box showed up and I saw small red knobs poking out the cardboard box. 

Very disappointing.

[rsjsouza]

The other day I got a TI-66 calculator wrapped only in a plastic grey envelope with no cushion...
I am not sure if it is because the seller sells mostly clothes (which are cusions by themselves) or because he was pissed the calculator went for US$0.99, but at least it survived.

[FrankenPC]

Dude, you got a free water bottle and map, why are you complaining? You are all set to go hiking! 

LOL!

[free_electron]

Empty plastic waterbottles, especially the thin walled ones designed to be crumpled up like yours,  are ideal cushioning material !
When empty, put the cap back on. Instant air cushion that is almost unpoppa le unlike those stupid airbubble plastic rolls.

[madshaman]

I think a better job could have been done, but I applaud the reuse of these materials, many shippers have used (although many more) plastic water bottles as packaging material.  I myself save any feasible packing material and reuse it.  What *must* end is that awful "spray foam into a grey plastic form" system.  Sure, it's convenient for the shipper, it protects well (apart from the risk of damaging knobs trying to extract the gear from it) but I can't reuse it, I can't recycle it, it's messy as hell and it just fills my garage until garbage day where *maybe* I can get a few bags of it out with the regular trash if there's enough allowance left (where I live we can only put out 6 trash bags every other week; I usually get away with 8; more and they'll just leave the extra bags there).


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[SeanB]

You are unlucky, here I live only 10 minutes drive from the dumpsite, and they will take pretty much whatever is put out provided it is in the black plastic bags they sell. If you have garden refuse you cry, they give 20 bags every 4 months, and if you want more you pay for them.

[David Hess]

I have seen worse.  Imagine a Tektronix 7000 mainframe with 3/4" Styrofoam insulation for padding rattling around in a cardboard box with an extra plug-in as well floating around at the front.  Amazingly, only the calibrator control which sticks out was damaged.

I would estimate that half of the 7000 mainframes I have bought were damaged during shipping by UPS whether they were packed well or not.

[Tinkerer]

Could have been worse, but at least he took basic precautions. I got my FLIR recently(from amazon) with the sides packed but not the top or bottom, thankfully it has its own rugged plastic case and nothing had punctured the box. On the other hand, I usually hate it when someone over packs something. Use a box twice the size needed and most of it is filled with air bags.

[FrankenPC]

I have seen worse.  Imagine a Tektronix 7000 mainframe with 3/4" Styrofoam insulation for padding rattling around in a cardboard box with an extra plug-in as well floating around at the front.  Amazingly, only the calibrator control which sticks out was damaged.

I would estimate that half of the 7000 mainframes I have bought were damaged during shipping by UPS whether they were packed well or not.

I just got my 7834 in PERFECT condition!  The person who shipped it really packed it well.  I got lucky.

[justanothercanuck]

Did they ship it using the World Shipping Program (by Pitney Bowes)?

How that works, is the seller ships the product to a central location, where it gets repackaged, and shipped to the destination country on a skid.

They've had a long history of using unsuitable packing materials, including used kleenex.

[echen1024]

Luckily, most things I bought have been packed really well. A shining example was the 3478A DMM. It was packed in a new double sided cardboard box, along with the tear-out foam inserts that fit the box and meter perfectly, glued down.

[kolbep]

Well, at least nobody has shipped a Projection TV Lens assembly using PC Boards with VFD's as packing material....    or have they?

[David Hess]

I have seen worse.  Imagine a Tektronix 7000 mainframe with 3/4" Styrofoam insulation for padding rattling around in a cardboard box with an extra plug-in as well floating around at the front.  Amazingly, only the calibrator control which sticks out was damaged.

I would estimate that half of the 7000 mainframes I have bought were damaged during shipping by UPS whether they were packed well or not.

I just got my 7834 in PERFECT condition!  The person who shipped it really packed it well.  I got lucky.

My 7834 looked good at first but when I went through the full calibration, I discovered a CRT geometry problem that amounted to trapezoid distortion so only vertical traces that were horizontally centered were actually vertical.  After much work including degaussing the CRT and shield, I concluded that it got dropped hard enough to bend the CRT elements despite being packaged adequately.

It is still usable over the center 2 to 4 divisions but time goes backwards on the left side of the CRT and speeds up on the right side.

[Bored@Work]

Did they ship it using the World Shipping Program (by Pitney Bowes)?

How that works, is the seller ships the product to a central location, where it gets repackaged, and shipped to the destination country on a skid.

They've had a long history of using unsuitable packing materials, including used kleenex.

You don't have to watch 40 minutes of videos to learn that the GSP program with Pitney Bowes and eBay is a fraud. Just a quick check of the TOS of that program is enough to figure out it is pure fraud http://pages.ebay.com/shipping/globalshipping/seller-tnc.html Just one quote (there are other gems in the TOS)

As between your Buyer and Pitney Bowes, risk of loss or damage to a GSP Item shall transfer to your Buyer from Pitney Bowes and/or its third party parcel processing service providers when the GSP Item leaves the U.S. Shipping Center.

I.e. as a buyer you pay horrible shipping costs and fees for the privilege that your item is not protected in any way during the long international trip once Pitney Bowes (literally?) kicks it out of their Kentucky dump.

[TerraHertz]

My 7834 looked good at first but when I went through the full calibration, I discovered a CRT geometry problem that amounted to trapezoid distortion so only vertical traces that were horizontally centered were actually vertical.  After much work including degaussing the CRT and shield, I concluded that it got dropped hard enough to bend the CRT elements despite being packaged adequately.

It is still usable over the center 2 to 4 divisions but time goes backwards on the left side of the CRT and speeds up on the right side.

Similar experience here, with a Tek 1485R waveform monitor. Seller's pics showed it working fine. The packing was solid - too solid. He'd used 2" thick sheets of styrofoam, top, bottom & sides. No external damage on arrival, but the tube internal gun components were bent. I presume the box got dropped on it's bottom face, and the large area of styrofoam under the 1485R just didn't compress at all.

This is why, despite the environmental downside I really like foam-in-place packing. It works. Keeps the gear away from the box, while being good at cushioning shocks. I'd rather have a packing disposal problem, than smashed equipment.

The most spectacularly bad packing disaster I had, was back in 2004 with a Tek 7633R rackmount storage scope. USA seller put it in a nice big, solid cardboard box, with about 2" of space all around. Then threw in a few handfulls of foam chips, closed it up and shipped it. Via a tumbler dryer, apparently. Scope frame, rear parts, rack brackets and some controls all broken. Most of the foam chips ended up inside the scope.
Zip of the photos below.

Then there's people that don't think about foam chips getting inside stuff. Like the 7000 series modules in More_stupidity.zip    Grrrr!

PS. That's a terrible way to treat a nice map.

[XOIIO]

My 7834 looked good at first but when I went through the full calibration, I discovered a CRT geometry problem that amounted to trapezoid distortion so only vertical traces that were horizontally centered were actually vertical.  After much work including degaussing the CRT and shield, I concluded that it got dropped hard enough to bend the CRT elements despite being packaged adequately.

It is still usable over the center 2 to 4 divisions but time goes backwards on the left side of the CRT and speeds up on the right side.

Similar experience here, with a Tek 1485R waveform monitor. Seller's pics showed it working fine. The packing was solid - too solid. He'd used 2" thick sheets of styrofoam, top, bottom & sides. No external damage on arrival, but the tube internal gun components were bent. I presume the box got dropped on it's bottom face, and the large area of styrofoam under the 1485R just didn't compress at all.

This is why, despite the environmental downside I really like foam-in-place packing. It works. Keeps the gear away from the box, while being good at cushioning shocks. I'd rather have a packing disposal problem, than smashed equipment.

The most spectacularly bad packing disaster I had, was back in 2004 with a Tek 7633R rackmount storage scope. USA seller put it in a nice big, solid cardboard box, with about 2" of space all around. Then threw in a few handfulls of foam chips, closed it up and shipped it. Via a tumbler dryer, apparently. Scope frame, rear parts, rack brackets and some controls all broken. Most of the foam chips ended up inside the scope.
Zip of the photos below.

Then there's people that don't think about foam chips getting inside stuff. Like the 7000 series modules in More_stupidity.zip    Grrrr!

PS. That's a terrible way to treat a nice map.

just... wow, you better have been able to get your money back.

[David Hess]

This is why, despite the environmental downside I really like foam-in-place packing. It works. Keeps the gear away from the box, while being good at cushioning shocks. I'd rather have a packing disposal problem, than smashed equipment.

I have two other 7000 series and some portables that were shipped this way and they arrived in perfect condition.

The most spectacularly bad packing disaster I had, was back in 2004 with a Tek 7633R rackmount storage scope. USA seller put it in a nice big, solid cardboard box, with about 2" of space all around. Then threw in a few handfulls of foam chips, closed it up and shipped it. Via a tumbler dryer, apparently. Scope frame, rear parts, rack brackets and some controls all broken. Most of the foam chips ended up inside the scope.

I have a rackmount 2232 that was shipped this way.  It was placed in a big box with a few handfuls of shipping peanuts.  The rackmount ended up getting bent but the oscilloscope seems fine.  It needs an unrelated repair.

The few 7000 plug-ins I have bought were all packaged very well but of course they are much smaller and easier to deal with.

[David Hess]

just... wow, you better have been able to get your money back.

The damage can be subtle despite being fatal so it is easy to miss until too late.  Often the cost of shipping something back for a refund is so high that there is no refund.  Getting compensation from the shipper if it was their fault is practically impossible.

[BBQ]

I remember the time i bought a vinyl for $100 which were shipped just wrapped in some paper. It was not worth $100 when it arrived to me hanging out of my mailbox in one corner of the sleeve. That was the day i quit that hobby. To look at the bright side, the other remaining copies increased a little bit in value.