It sure is a shame to see a tonearm end up like that. Given the relative weights and strength of that assembly, it would have to suffer a fairly good fall/impact for its own inertia to break it like that. Shippers really must be treating packages roughly!
Unfortunately (not talking about the OP here!
) a lot of people selling these things do not have experience shipping TTs. They aren't on AK, reading all the horror stories about broken TTs. They don't know how to pack these things properly, and just don't have a clue how much (and what kind of) packaging is needed --or worse, can't be bothered with the little bit of extra time/expense/work. The sad thing is that, even when someone takes the time and tries to do/does a good job of packing, as in this case, the gorilla-bozo squad at the shipping companies may still manage to break something. :nono: :sigh:
I hesitate to generalize, but the consistently best packaging I've seen comes from Japan. Ordinary Yahoo Japan (equivalent there to eBay in the States) sellers will pack things almost as well as factory packing, with carefully cut and fitted styrofoam and cardboard casings, small items put in sealed baggies and labeled, etc... It's not uncommon to find a nice hand-written thank you note atop the packaging when you open it, either. Even relatively unbreakable things are often "over-packed" like that. I've seen this repeatedly, in packages sent by different people from different parts of Japan, to different recipients here, so it definitely seems to be a part of the culture to do this, and as a result, things bought from Japan rarely arrive broken. I wish people elsewhere were more like that!
Of course, there are occasional "miracle" stories where something shipped loose in a bag with some old clothes, wadded newspaper or a few loose peanuts for packing, arrives intact after a long trip. But the horror stories far, far outweigh those. There is never a justification for taking such a risk, even if there are explanations (greed, stupidity, ignorance, not caring...).
