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Pioneer PL-70LII Damaged in shipping
- Thread starter Rotary
- Start date
Here's the thing about polystyrene that is not always considered; It is enormously difficult to compress. As light as it is, the molecule's compressive strength is phenomenal.
I worked for a couple of years recycling polystyrene fruit boxes. For a private concern working within the premises of one of the largest supermarket chains' central storehouse. What I'm leading to is this: The supermarket chain was trying to think of ways to deal with their leftover broken useless polystyrene boxes. They wanted to ditch utilising us and deal with the situation with their own employees. So they set out to design a machine to compress the polystyrene fruit boxes. They finally delivered a working model. It stood about 7 feet tall. 6 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Really strongly made(like bulldozer strong) using hydraulic rams to compress the styrene. The styrene was expelled from a 4 inch diameter tube. It didn't come out like toothpaste. It came out like a shell from a Howitzer. The compressed styrene 'bullet' (4 inch diameter/5 inch long bullet) would emerge with a loud bang, rocket 50 feet and hit a retaining wall. The styrene bullet was as hard as a rock. It wouldn't shatter when it hit the wall. Just bounced off.
Absolutely deadly if anyone was in the path of the outlet.
The problem was that despite the machine being made with earthmover grade steel plates etc, the gigantic force needed to compress and expel the bullet was causing the machine to choke on the bulllet. The machine would run for a few hours, then jam up. Or break. Eventually despite repairing the machine multiple times and it being out of action 99% of the time, they gave up. It sat idle and got carted away.
This is the prime virtue of polystyrene as a packaging material. It is light, holds it's shape and takes a blow well. Bubble wrap is useful and has it's place but styrene will be found for eons after all of the bubblewrap has deflated and degraded. Whoever develops a biodgradeable substiute will be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
I worked for a couple of years recycling polystyrene fruit boxes. For a private concern working within the premises of one of the largest supermarket chains' central storehouse. What I'm leading to is this: The supermarket chain was trying to think of ways to deal with their leftover broken useless polystyrene boxes. They wanted to ditch utilising us and deal with the situation with their own employees. So they set out to design a machine to compress the polystyrene fruit boxes. They finally delivered a working model. It stood about 7 feet tall. 6 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Really strongly made(like bulldozer strong) using hydraulic rams to compress the styrene. The styrene was expelled from a 4 inch diameter tube. It didn't come out like toothpaste. It came out like a shell from a Howitzer. The compressed styrene 'bullet' (4 inch diameter/5 inch long bullet) would emerge with a loud bang, rocket 50 feet and hit a retaining wall. The styrene bullet was as hard as a rock. It wouldn't shatter when it hit the wall. Just bounced off.
Absolutely deadly if anyone was in the path of the outlet.
The problem was that despite the machine being made with earthmover grade steel plates etc, the gigantic force needed to compress and expel the bullet was causing the machine to choke on the bulllet. The machine would run for a few hours, then jam up. Or break. Eventually despite repairing the machine multiple times and it being out of action 99% of the time, they gave up. It sat idle and got carted away.
This is the prime virtue of polystyrene as a packaging material. It is light, holds it's shape and takes a blow well. Bubble wrap is useful and has it's place but styrene will be found for eons after all of the bubblewrap has deflated and degraded. Whoever develops a biodgradeable substiute will be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
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True. This thread only gets the information that the packer chooses to share, now or later, and there wasn't much of it.
When someone talks about their packing methods and never mentions double-boxing, I assume they don't unless and until I hear otherwise. That's just how I go about it as someone who buys but never sells. A little caution can be a good thing for people who purchase turntables and tape decks, both of which can be quite good at destroying themselves in transit.
If the item is a USB stick. Bubblewrap and peanuts are perfectly sufficient because the item has insuffucient inherent mass to destroy the packaging. The denser and weightier the item is, the more the necessity for firmer tougher bulwark material to counter the inevitable poor handling in transit.
Where sites like Buyee and Unisound fall down is that they aren't usually the original seller. The person who packs the item is the Yahoo Japan seller. Someone in Japan buys the item from Yahoo, adds a profit margin and relists it to mainly foreign buyers. The original seller on Yahoo packs the tiem for domestic shipping. In practice, the Japanese domestic freight handlers take a lot more care than the international freight handlers. So an item which might survive being shipped within Japan gets annihilated upon being resold through Buyee and Unisound. The profit margin seller on Buyee and Unisound never repack the item. However it is packed from the Yahoo original seller is how they onsend it. Hence the many turntable disasters from Japan. They are Buyee Buyee to your turntable and Unsound(the correct spelling).
The only interesting thing is that the way Aerobat packed meant that the merchandise arrived without damage,
despite all claims that it is impossible to do it in such a way (or do you mean he's lying?) Someone meant it was just "luck", the only thing in his story that can be called "luck", was that it was "luck" that he packed the way he did.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat”
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I didn't claim anything was impossible to do. I didn't say anything about Aerobat lying either, nor was I trying to plant the idea. Your imagination is getting the better of you.
Bruno Primas
Super Member
It's too much of a risk to ship a turntable unless packed by a pro.
Hmmm, are there any crushed corners near the damage on the carton? I’m not seeing any and would expect some given the hard point damage the plinth has, indicating it may have been dropped prior to shipment and sent damaged hoping that the shipper would bear the blame for the packer’s carelessness. That being said, that table doesn’t have the 2” padding on it most vendors require for insurance coverage, and certainly not the 3” FedEx does. You most likely may see your insurance claim denied and need to look to the sales platform or your credit card for restitution.
I wish you the best in getting the compensation you deserve.
This is my issue with the expanded forms; they don't compress to absorb shocks, but pass it on to the protected items. Before I retired I used discarded shrink wrap from pallets to fill the voids in my cartons between the exterior walls and the bubblewrapped goods inside. It worked great as when it was balled up it would stabilize the item from shifting as well as add a level of shock absorption. You could beat my cartons with baseball bats and the goods inside would be fine as the shocks were absorbed, not transmitted.
Aerobat said:
I've shipped a lot of stuff, and a disassembled bubble wrapped TT that is then embedded in foam peanuts in a huge box will get there undamaged
Tonoje said:
I strongly doubt that's sufficient.
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For all of the noise here, I have never had a claim. Yes some of the very good 2” poly sheet foam lines the box on all six sides to start. But the many layers of bubble stand insurance claims better than any styro sheeting foam jobs. Wonder why?
Also might get a clue that I do this weekly (by that pic) for a well-known company and yeah I’m good at what I do.
No loss/gain for me here, just adding in experience from doing a thing over time.
I sent an obsidian plinth and motor unit, tonearm and platter to Korea, using my packing. Yes, it was fine and about 80 pounds worth.
OP, I hope you get some
$ back. That packing was insufficient.
Also might get a clue that I do this weekly (by that pic) for a well-known company and yeah I’m good at what I do.
No loss/gain for me here, just adding in experience from doing a thing over time.
I sent an obsidian plinth and motor unit, tonearm and platter to Korea, using my packing. Yes, it was fine and about 80 pounds worth.
OP, I hope you get some
$ back. That packing was insufficient.
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Zwuttoo, I'll explain what that meant, but I won't be going further into this with you.
"I strongly doubt that's sufficient":
1. I strongly doubt = a personal opinion.
2. "Sufficient" meant suitable in general for packing turntables safely enough for them to survive the impacts the package might be subjected to. Turntables can survive a journey in insufficient packaging, but they can also be damaged or destroyed. As someone has mentioned in this thread, damage is not always visible on inspection. If the packaging isn't done right, the possibility of invisible damage is also increased, in addition to the existing risk of visible damage or worse.
There is nothing there that even remotely resembles an implication of lying. It would be civil of you to drop that.
And some context for how this came up: the OP (Rotary) had a turntable shipped from Japan to, only guessing, the United States. If to any other country than Japan, it would have been shipped by air, so there's more than just a road or rail journey involved. There is plenty of scope for rough treatment along the way. That requires very good packaging, and not all sellers, by any means, are up to the task. Also, the heavier the turntable, and this was a heavy one, the greater the risk.
Aerobat didn't say whether he's shipped turntables overseas (and as a buyer, where the topic of turnable packing and shipping is concerned, I tend to assume a no until evidence points to a yes). That's fine, but the actual context of the thread is still for a turntable that was shipped internationally and arrived damaged.
On a slightly different tack, I'm pretty sure a few sellers in Japan take advantage of the fact that it's going to be very troublesome for their overseas customer to actually return an audio product. That's where some caution buying on eBay or through Yahoo Auctions or Buyee is strongly advisable.
"I strongly doubt that's sufficient":
1. I strongly doubt = a personal opinion.
2. "Sufficient" meant suitable in general for packing turntables safely enough for them to survive the impacts the package might be subjected to. Turntables can survive a journey in insufficient packaging, but they can also be damaged or destroyed. As someone has mentioned in this thread, damage is not always visible on inspection. If the packaging isn't done right, the possibility of invisible damage is also increased, in addition to the existing risk of visible damage or worse.
There is nothing there that even remotely resembles an implication of lying. It would be civil of you to drop that.
And some context for how this came up: the OP (Rotary) had a turntable shipped from Japan to, only guessing, the United States. If to any other country than Japan, it would have been shipped by air, so there's more than just a road or rail journey involved. There is plenty of scope for rough treatment along the way. That requires very good packaging, and not all sellers, by any means, are up to the task. Also, the heavier the turntable, and this was a heavy one, the greater the risk.
Aerobat didn't say whether he's shipped turntables overseas (and as a buyer, where the topic of turnable packing and shipping is concerned, I tend to assume a no until evidence points to a yes). That's fine, but the actual context of the thread is still for a turntable that was shipped internationally and arrived damaged.
On a slightly different tack, I'm pretty sure a few sellers in Japan take advantage of the fact that it's going to be very troublesome for their overseas customer to actually return an audio product. That's where some caution buying on eBay or through Yahoo Auctions or Buyee is strongly advisable.
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As much as I wish I could contact the dude, I use a broker for my purchases, also there's something called a language barrier believe it or not. Makes communication hard :'(
Is that how you think it works? I mean they do repack but that's actually how you think the buying process works? Funny
The claim is submitted and we shall see. I didn't add the photo but there is visible deformation on the exterior of the box. It looks like it was dropped on the corner at some point
This thread is just headache inducing. Thank you to the ones who actually answered my question that this thread was meant for and offered help, you're wonderful people. For the rest, it feels like reddit with all the people saying "can't believe you trusted the packaging" like I have some third eye and can see how the dude goes about packaging things in a country on the other side of the world with people who speak a different language. Better yet I should have given him a university lecture on packaging and the molecular structure of foam and the benefits of polystyrene over bubble wrap! If I wanted to have a conversation about packaging tips I would have asked in a different thread but believe it or not I didn't package this. The claim has been filed, guess we'll see what happens. It still works so I'm just going to enjoy it as is.
If you have more accurate information, there's nothing to stop you sharing it. It can be useful to future purchasers. There's one right now on Vinyl Engine who bought a Technics turntable from Japan. We'll see whether that arrives unscathed.
Yahoo Auctions items in general are sold and shipped within Japan only. Buyee is a way of circumventing that. The seller is therefore not obliged to pack as if the item is being sent to Germany, Indonesia, Argentina, United States, Australia...take your pick. If going through Buyee, it is Buyee that is responsible for the onward shipment, and for the packing that is supposed to protect the item during that onward journey. Not the original seller.
I don't use Buyee so I don't really know the full details of how they operate. I don't use Unisound either, so I can't verify what Theophile said about them, but they do seem to be a rung or two down from the service that is offered by HiFiDo. I do use Audio Station, they do not ship overseas, but people hijack their listing data and put those turntables up on Ebay. Anyone who buys that way is taking the risk of buying a turntable where the original shop package, perfectly good for a shipment within Japan, is just thrown in a box and sent on its way overseas.
From your pictures, somebody screwed up. The original seller, or Buyee, or both. Basically, the person or organization that knew it was going overseas. That packing ain't good.
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Aight here's your run down. Buyee is a third party broker. You pay them, they buy the product, organize customs, receive, store, and ship the item. They are officially partnered with yahoo auctions and the price you pay is not artificially inflated by resellers. You have access to the same sales and sellers that they have domestically in Japan. It's not a marketplace. I got this PL-70LII for $500, a killer deal. Now I pay a bit extra through their service fee (which I think is fair value for not having to do the customs clearance paperwork and organize shipping and such) that's how they make their money. That and their packaging and shipping service. They have multiple different shipment options and methods, they offer insurance as well for a small fee which I of course took and have already submitted a claim for. As this was an abnormally large package they ended up repacking it, and it looks like whoever did it did a messy job and didn't fully encapsulate it. First time it's happened to me, but nothing we can do now. It sucks my package got damaged, but I didn't ask for advice on how to package things properly or a lecture on how it's stupid to buy turntables from overseas. I asked for solutions on how to fix the damage that's there. I like the service because it's convenient and easy. I got a good deal on this thing so it's not the end of the world. For the love of God just give me relevant advice or just don't reply at all. Three pages of bickering about polystyrene and bubble wrap. Unbelievable
"Strongly doubt"
A phrase used to express a high degree of skepticism, disbelief, or uncertainty regarding a statement, claim, or potential future event. When someone says they "strongly doubt" something, they are indicating that they find it very hard to believe or highly unlikely to happen.
"Sufficient"
Sufficient comes from a Latin verb meaning "to meet the need." If something is sufficient it has met, or satisfied, a need, and when something is not sufficient, it is too little to take care of what's needed.