Here’s a shipping tale….One of our regulars, and certainly by now a buddy of mine, purchased a Collings one of a kind guitar form me. I packed it up carefully and brought it to FedEx and shipped it to him for pick up at his local FedEx location.

Package arrives. He goes to pick it up….and this is what he got….



This is real...Can you imagine…….
Seems as if the standard guitar box was halved…guitar removed..stuffed with an odd assortment of sneakers…re-taped and delivered. We both suspected that someone inside FedEx slit open the box took out the guitar and threw in the sneakers. My buddy refuses it of course and starts the claim process. He was also good enough to return to take the pictures to help with my claim process.

About 2 hours later I receive a call from FedEx that an acoustic guitar was found in overstock in Newark. Apparently overstock is where FedEx puts items that they can no longer identify. Sort of a giant lost and found. After giving them enough descriptive information so that they can be certain it’s mine, I get them to pack it back up correctly overnight it to the buyer. He gets it this morning and thank goodness it’s not damaged.

Here’s FedEx’s explanation….The box probably got wet in transit (the Northeast has been underwater as of late)…split apart somewhere in the Newark hub…the guitar falls out and gets separated from the box and moved to overstock…while some sneakers fall out of some other shipment and end up near the split box…a FedEx employee assumes that’s what was supposed to be in the box…stuffs the box seals it and lets it rip.

Just a note…thanks to my buddy for all his help on his end.

you should ALWAYS put your name, address, and phone number on and in the case when shipping guitars.

And it's not a bad idea to stick an address label inside the guitar on the top, too.... handy for proving it's yours.

Glad it turned out well!!!

Bryan Kimsey
http://www.bryankimsey.com

Wow, that's an amazing story! No doubt you had the headstock wrapped well inside it's case to prevent any damage, which surely helped it be received in good order (eventually). You must have initially thought the guitar was never going to be seen again!

I've got an equally ridiculous Fed Ex story. When my new OM-2H was being shipped at the end of March from Toronto (fairly mild) to Winnipeg
(freakin' cold!) where I live in Canada, I had that week off work and I was hoping the shipment might arrive that day. I waited until about 2:00 in the afternoon but it didn't arrive so my wife and I went out for about an hour to run a couple of errands.
When we got home I saw a Fed Ex sticker on the side door as I drove down the driveway to my detached garage in the back yard, so I knew I'd missed the delivery. I was mildly upset about that, and as I'm walking from the garage to the back door, I see a big cardboard box standing beside my barbeque behind my house!! The Fed Ex driver had left a $4,000 (CDN) guitar sitting in the backyard with nobody home!! And it's still winter! I couldn't believe it. It was a surreal experience seeing it sitting there.
Now, it was only there for about 15 minutes, according to the time on the delivery slip, but what if it had been dropped there at 9:00 AM and nobody came home for 8 hours? Or what if it had been stolen? I suppose the driver had no idea of the contents, but still....
I was just so happy to get the guitar that I didn't bother even calling Fed Ex to rip 'em a new one. I brought it in the house and let it sit for 24 hours before I took it out of it's case to see that it was a beauty and unharmed, and that the 12th Fret had done a superb job of packing it for the 1500 mile road trip in the back of an unheated truck. What a relief that was!
I guess there's a lot of guitar shipment horror stories, and I'm sure not all of them turn out well.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ex-CW643:
you should ALWAYS put your name, address, and phone number on and in the case when shipping guitars.

And it's not a bad idea to stick an address label inside the guitar on the top, too.... handy for proving it's yours.

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Good point! Where was this post a week ago. I've shipped so many guitars and never thought of it...and for that matter received so many with nothing except on the box...from here on in the will be id on and inside the case.

Well, I 'm the recipient of the OO that Jim refers to.

It was my guitar for quite a while, until I sold it to him a few months ago in a GAS situaation. I am lucky to get her back.

I was real anxious to go down to the Fed Ex shipping center and pick the guitar up, only to be shocked by the cut down box (knee high). I immediately knew something had gone wrong, and my worst fear was that it had actually been stolen by someone.

Also, Jim told me after he shipped the guitar that he had a hard time finding a guitar box to ship it in, but that he had to pay to get one to ship it in. When I arrived at the Fed Ex center the first thing they told me was "Jack, you have an unusaully sized box for guitar waiting for you", and then when they bring a box that is only knee high, I am thinking, "Boy, someone's got to be playing a joke on me."

It is a strange story , but true. Luckily, when Jim talked to them, he coached them into packing the guitar correctly for its safe overnight flight. I picked it up this morning, and after inspecting it, all way well.

I think this was much harder for Jim to take than me, and I appeciate his calmness and reassurance during the entire ordeal. We have learned to know each other fairly well over the past few months, so there never was any doubt by either of us that it was a Fed Ex problem from the start.

My only question that remains is I wonder who is missing some tennis shoes. And, the funny thing about the tennis shoes, none of them matched, in color or size (like, one half of a pair was missing in each style and color).

This is a good one to laugh about now, but Jim and I were both alarmed and disturbed initially that the guitar might have been stolen along the way. We are very fortunate that it all turned out O.K.

Lefty... I tried to keep you anonymous....it's those new HIPPA regs...don't they cross over from helthcare to guitarists?

Glad you've got it back. As I said you were a real help during all this.

Well, I suppose I can use those shoe strings for drop tunings.

[This message was edited by lefty on June 07, 2003 at 10:15 PM.]

My father use to be in the trading business and when he ship Shoe Samples to others, he only ships one out of the pair of shoes, cut off one side of the shirt etc... Cause theres so many people asking for Samples not because they are looking for business opportunities but just looking for free pair of shoes or shirts or whatever..

Back to shipping Guitars..

I have lots of experience shipping Guitars via Fedex and UPS, what I don't like about UPS is they will quote you a price for the shippment and after they finally ship the parcel, they will send you another invoice asking for more money... I call them and they said they under-estimate the cost for shipping in the first quote (I gave them the exact measurement and weight of the parcel)

I think this is a really bad business practice, they steal business from their partners being the cheapest with their first quote but always turn out to be the most expensive...

Not sure if this happens for US domestic shipment, but this is happen to me for the 3 times I use UPS.

Ed, hope it wl go well when my C10 arrv by FedEx. Kim Sherman wl adv me the actual costs wif inv nos & I wl pay the shpg directly over here

Who got the sneakers?

You would'a thought at least as a consolation.

Similar story to KV's:

After I agree in March to purchase a D-1 from a guy in NW Kansas, we decide on 2nd Day Air UPS. It was a long, cold winter in Maine, with single digits and teens way into March, so we watch the forecast very carefully for a night where temps will be above freezing and time the shipment so that that will be the night it sits in the unheated UPS warehouse before being delivered the next day.

The local UPS guy is a picker, and delivers something to my workplace every day. He's coaching us through this so we can get the guitar in my hands before summer, but still not risk getting it too cold. My seller ships it as agreed but on the day it is to arrive, the hip UPS guy shows up empty handed, says maybe it got delayed and UPS will send it down from Bangor by another driver the same day, in order to meet their time commitment. They do, but the rookie driver goes to the wrong address for packages, and, unbeknownst to me, one of our maintenance guys signs for it. He brings it to our loading dock after hours, can't get in, so leaves it outside as THAT night's temperatures dive back into the low teens.

The next day, I check UPS website to find that the guitar's been signed for by someone whose name I don't recognize! I've got work to do, of course, so can only pursue the mystery in little windows of time, and don't discover what's happened until 4:30 PM, when I notice the box leaning up against the side of the loading dock.

Well, you know the rest of the story. If there had been damage, I wouldn't be telling it so lightly. I let the guitar warm up slowly, got it out, tuned it up, played a G chord, fainted, came to, and fell in love with mahogany guitars. I still prefer (just slightly) my D-3, but there's a growing group of pickers up this way with gas for a D-1.

Glad ya'll's tales turned out good, too.

B