>In a message dated 11/16/01 9:50:40 AM, ChrisS@INFORMS.COM writes:
>
><< Any nightmarish shipping stories?  Look at this and you might feel better:
>
>http://homepage.mac.com/simonster/PhotoAlbum3.html >>
>
>What bullshit!  Some idiot doesn't have the good sense to package something
>properly and then he has the gonads to whine about it.  Feel better?  I feel
>worse because every time I pay UPS their ever increasing fee, I have to
>wonder if I am underwriting these weak sisters.  If I were the UPS adjuster
>investigating his claim, I would deny it on the grounds that this guy is not
>even astute enough to be allowed to ship a bag of marshmallows.
>
>Rich

Well, UPS has a reputation as "Universal Pacel Smashers", and is
near-impossible to get compensation from when an item arrives smashed
flat.

Ben Tan was telling me he had no time for such stories and was going
to send me the CLK wheels via these good folk. He was horrified, on
arriving at the local UPS depot, to see a driver THROWING PARCELS 15
FEET into the truck. So there. Tell Ben it's bullshit.

No amount of packaging can protect fragile items (eg computer
monitors) from such deliberate abuse.

Of course UPS isn't the only outfit guilty of this. I saw last
Christmas surveillance videos of airport workers tossing packages in
the general direction of a large bin, throwing them way up in the
air. Plenty were entirely missing the bin.

This sort of criminal behavior is common, and it happens everywhere.