CONTEST Shipping Delay Contest

CONTEST
fig

fig

Village Idiot
The subject of my next groovy contest was to be another iteration of what is certainly by now the source of many a water-cooler arguments and/or romances, the "Guess How Many?" series. Unfortunately, my 100-MMBF5457s that were to be tested, matched, and given away as a prize are schtuk in Cologne due to very nasty weather....it's likely part of the whole apocalypse happening all around us but who knows? Anyway, all the best to the folks in Germany...hope the weather improves (for your sake, not my package's.....although that'd be a nice bonus). That's the weather, now back to you Bob.......Bob? Right.....contest...hang on, I need to read back....ahhh yes....so while the mini-fets are MIA, what better way to fill in the time than a contest about shipping delays?

Tell us your worst shipping nightmare and win an ULTIMATE (better than the premium) $100 PedalPCB gift code!

Entries will be judged. Oh, you want to know how? Okay, sheesh! :ROFLMAO:

Once all entries are in and time has expired.....hold on, that sounds somewhat ominous....how about "once the contest has ended"? too vague? I'll work on it....let's say it's a working phrase. Once the contest has ended, (see I like it).....now I have to say it again....Once the contest has ended, I will repost each entry and the winer will be chosen by the number of reactions (regardless of reaction type). In the likely event of a tie (universal constant), I'll choose one.

Y'all got until Saturday, 11:59pm ET to tell your tale, spin your yarn, chew the beard, regurgitate your woe, and a myriad of other tings.

Once again, thanks to all of you. Just about everything I have learned [ please ignore the "village idiot" sign I'm wearing for a moment ] about electronics is a result of being a part of this community, and though it may not fill volumes it has filled my heart.

Okay, with the idiot sign illuminated again....let's get this thingy rollin.....
 
My worst shipping story is not pedal related, but it was a real fiasco nonetheless. This was years ago and I had ordered a Blackberry from Verizon. I had recently moved and had called to make sure they had my current address on file, which they assured me they did. Order the new device and days later I get an email saying that it has been delivered. I start thinking, well that is impossible, I didn't sign for it. Turns out they delivered it to my old address, which was an apartment, and the new tenant signed for it and took it for himself. I go back there and he never answers the door and I never get the device. Well I contact Verizon and they say that I have to pay for it since it was delivered and that I can't get a replacement device. I inform them that they delivered it to the wrong address. This goes on for a while, and I ask to speak with someone higher up. Eventually they concede and say they will remove the charge and send a new device to my correct address. It ended up taking months to get the charge off my account, however I did finally end up getting a phone. Turned out that the Blackberry was the Storm model, probably the worst one ever made and I had to RMA it twice. Left Verizon for good after all that!
 
Not a delay really, but my shipping nightmare:

I sold a pedal a couple of years ago and didn't hear from him until the 29th day, and then he said it didn't work when he tried it. I happily offer him a return for refund and I'm super anxious to get it back to see what was wrong with it. I open the return box and there is nothing but rotten banana peels and cigarette butts in it. I couldn't do anything about it due to return policies (paypal I think) that made the tracking on the return the final boss. The postmaster said I would have had to suspect the scam ahead of time and have him open it before delivery. Then, a few days later he lists it for sale on Madbean as his own build, at twice the price I sold it to him for.
 
Betty Wont said:
Not a delay really, but my shipping nightmare:

I sold a pedal a couple of years ago and didn't hear from him until the 29th day, and then he said it didn't work when he tried it. I happily offer him a return for refund and I'm super anxious to get it back to see what was wrong with it. I open the return box and there is nothing but rotten banana peels and cigarette butts in it. I couldn't do anything about it due to return policies (paypal I think) that made the tracking on the return the final boss. The postmaster said I would have had to suspect the scam ahead of time and have him open it before delivery. Then, a few days later he lists it for sale on Madbean as his own build, at twice the price I sold it to him for.
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That is damn low right there!
 
Not my shipping nightmare but one I ran across while working at Best Buy back in the day. We had a customer come in with a laptop computer she had shipped to her. We asked what the problem was and she simply replied, "Open it!". Inside was a box or rocks....literally a box of rocks. That's what she received. Really stumped us and we still don't know if this was a scam on her part, someone at the warehouse screwed up, or if her package was tampered with on her doorstep. Regardless, it was really freaking weird.
 
I was on the shipping end, not the receiver end of this one. I have a customer in Australia that bought a pedal, and I shipped it USPS first class international, which usually takes about 2 weeks to get to Australia. After 2 months he emailed me and said he still hadn't seen it, so I checked the tracking. Sure enough about three weeks after shipping the package made it to Melbourne, then turned around and went to... Estonia. For some reason it got a hundred miles from where it was supposed to be then shot clear across to the other side of the world. After a week of the package sitting in Estonia I went ahead and refunded the customer. After spending 2 weeks in Estonia it made its way back to Australia and was eventually delivered 3 months after it was shipped, so the customer got a free pedal for his patience.
 
Betty Wont said:
Not a delay really, but my shipping nightmare:

I sold a pedal a couple of years ago and didn't hear from him until the 29th day, and then he said it didn't work when he tried it. I happily offer him a return for refund and I'm super anxious to get it back to see what was wrong with it. I open the return box and there is nothing but rotten banana peels and cigarette butts in it. I couldn't do anything about it due to return policies (paypal I think) that made the tracking on the return the final boss. The postmaster said I would have had to suspect the scam ahead of time and have him open it before delivery. Then, a few days later he lists it for sale on Madbean as his own build, at twice the price I sold it to him for.
Click to expand...
do-you-want-a-rampage-because-thats-how-you-get-a-rampage.jpg
 
Betty Wont said:
Not a delay really, but my shipping nightmare:

I sold a pedal a couple of years ago and didn't hear from him until the 29th day, and then he said it didn't work when he tried it. I happily offer him a return for refund and I'm super anxious to get it back to see what was wrong with it. I open the return box and there is nothing but rotten banana peels and cigarette butts in it. I couldn't do anything about it due to return policies (paypal I think) that made the tracking on the return the final boss. The postmaster said I would have had to suspect the scam ahead of time and have him open it before delivery. Then, a few days later he lists it for sale on Madbean as his own build, at twice the price I sold it to him for.
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Pretty ballsey selling a stolen pedal from a custom builder on a custom pedal building website. Surely there's no chance you'd ever see it there! What a sad person.
 
vigilante398 said:
I was on the shipping end, not the receiver end of this one. I have a customer in Australia that bought a pedal, and I shipped it USPS first class international, which usually takes about 2 weeks to get to Australia. After 2 months he emailed me and said he still hadn't seen it, so I checked the tracking. Sure enough about three weeks after shipping the package made it to Melbourne, then turned around and went to... Estonia. For some reason it got a hundred miles from where it was supposed to be then shot clear across to the other side of the world. After a week of the package sitting in Estonia I went ahead and refunded the customer. After spending 2 weeks in Estonia it made its way back to Australia and was eventually delivered 3 months after it was shipped, so the customer got a free pedal for his patience.
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Had a similar experience shipping a pedal to Canada. Really didn't want to do it in the first place, but the guy really wanted the pedal. It was a Tone Reaper clone from PedalPCB. Shipped it off and it took about three weeks to get there for some reason, guy gets it and says he doesn't like it, then wants me to pay to ship it back. 🤬
 
I have nothing too nightmarish, but more of a mystery. This was probably 15 years ago or so.

My parents sent me a package for my birthday or something, and it never arrived. For some reason they had no tracking for it (either didn't get it or didn't save it), so we had no idea what happened to it. After a few weeks, we just assumed it was lost or stolen for good.

Then we find it a several months later, in my backyard. We never get mail delivered to our backyard, so that was unusual. And we figure there's no way it was there all along--it had to show up more recently or we either would've found it, or it would've been more trashed by the elements. So my best guess is that it was temporarily lost, then found, then sheepishly inserted in my backyard.
 
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I shipped a functional Sears Silvertone 1482 amp chassis as part of a Madbean Christmas PIF contest so long as winner paid shipping. Time passed and no arrival ... frustrated back and forth with the winner ended up escalated to madbean etc etc. Working through the red tape of the USPS took a lot of time and eventually they were able to admit that it was involved in a winter weather vehicle accident and all that was recovered was the shipping label which was ironically sent to me return mail. I ended up refunding the shipping cost and gear heaven claimed another amplifier. I was refunded only the cost of shipping because I was unable to prove that it was properly packed at time of shipping. Meanwhile I'm left wondering exactly how well packaged something has to be to survive a winter weather crash ...
 
So I sold a set up pickups that were coil tapped, not split, tapped. They worked great, I just hate the 490 series Gibson pickups. The guy gets them, and later claims his luthier buddy said the were not working properly, why else would I take them out of my Les Paul. I explain t they’re fine, and they’re not coil splitting, they’re tapping, and explained what it meant, and I took them out of my new Les Paul because I had custom ones wound. So he says he’s taking a trip to Australia and needs to get this resolved. Aha! Now I know he needs the money and not the pickups. We go through eBay, and of course I lost. I bet the pickups back and refund him. Sold them to someone who knows what coil splitting is. What a freakin nightmare.
 
I am on the opposite end of your Cologne challenges.

Spec up a bunch of pedals, put in the Mouser order on the 7th, packed on the 8th.. picked up by Fedex yesterday (16th). No other update except "Delayed". FML.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: fig
chongmagic said:
Had a similar experience shipping a pedal to Canada. Really didn't want to do it in the first place, but the guy really wanted the pedal. It was a Tone Reaper clone from PedalPCB. Shipped it off and it took about three weeks to get there for some reason, guy gets it and says he doesn't like it, then wants me to pay to ship it back. 🤬
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Welp, you can't have this one back...:p


bFo9ah2.jpg
 
I bought a nice point to point commercial EL34 hi-fi amp from an acquaintance. He packed it well, double boxed in the original packing. I had previously listened to the unit, but wasn't ready to pull the trigger at the time, so ended up having to have it shipped. Needless to say, UPS decided to throw it off a three story building I think. Bent the transformer bell, the corner of the chassis, and when i tried to test it blew all the power supply caps out as something had shorted against the chassis I couldn't see. I call the guy, he makes a claim. UPS makes me ship it to them for review. This thing was fixable, but the seller insisted to make the claim. In the end, he got the amp back, fixed it, and still listens to it. He was quick about refunding my money, though I'd have rather had the amp.

Oh, and I waited 10 months for my guitar kit to get from china to here last year. :rolleyes:
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
Years ago a bought a vacuum box on a crowdfunding thing at what sounded like a really great deal, well I got emails for a while about this delay and that redesign and eventually wrote it off as a gamble lost, a year later I get divorced, live in an apartment for a year or so, eventually I move in with Vikki and about 6 months later my second mistake calls to say I got a package there, so after work I ride over to pick it up the mystery package and it's the Vacuvita at long last, which works great btw, and then they sent me a bunch of vacuum bags and containers free for the delay, not really a shipping nightmare, but all these tales reminded me of that
 
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