Another bad packing job pushes my buttons … perhaps I’ll write a book!

box1 — When the post office wraps your package in cling wrap, you know that “Houston, we have a problem.”

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014 — One of my biggest pet peeves in the world of buying via eBay is when a seller does a crappy job of packing the merchandise I am buying from him or her with my hard-earned dough. I’ve sold my share of stuff on eBay over the years, and I take pride in doing a good job packing the stuff I sell.

It gets a little crazy with me too, because I will spend more money than I charge for shipping and handling if I believe it is necessary. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes its necessary. I consider it just a part of doing business on eBay.

box2 — … and here’s why they had to wrap the box — to keep it from completely falling apart.

So you can imagine my reaction when my rural mailbox contained the remains of a cardboard box that had been wrapped four or five times with cling wrap. “Unusual way to pack something,” I thought to myself. Then I realized the cling wrap was holding the box together — my 1944 Vibroplex Lightning Bug DeLuxe (in Battleship Gray) had literally beaten apart the box in which it was sent. When I removed the cling wrap, the box nearly fell the rest of the way apart.

box4 — I am petitioning Merriam-Webster to put this photo in their next dictionary edition next to the definition for “incompetent packing job.”

I H-A-T-E opening boxes like this — when I get a key in the mail, its like “Christmas In (the current month)!” But when something like this arrives, you know its bad news all the way around.

The key, as shown in the photos, was packed with some wadded brown paper. The key was wrapped in the same type of brown paper. The damage was caused because the key moving around in the box during transit compacted the paper, giving it more room to bounce — and in this case, beat the hell out of the box.

Damage — thankfully! — was minimal (if you don’t count knocking the keying lever loose and jamming backwards. That brownish “patina” came from decades of cigarette or cigar smoking (unless the OM chewed tobacco and spit on his key regularly!).

DAMAGE? If you look closely at the key, it wasn’t mint to start with. The spring tension adjustment screw was broken off (though the business end of it was still there to hold the end of the lever return spring), and the key had an overall look that it had lived part of its life in a spittoon.

The lever was knocked out of place and jammed rearward; the lever twisted and jammed against the stop screws and it didn’t move again. The thumb piece was already broken when viewed in the auction. The dash contact post was loosened too.

key3 — This photo illustrates the “patina” the seller called “rust” wasn’t rust. Using some excellent products, changed the keys per group. Despite my rant, I think this key is going to clean up very well.

I bought the key worth the money; the seller said it had “some rust.” The rust turned out to be what I can only say looks like 50 years of tobacco smoke. Check the last photo on this page, and you can see what the dot contact post looked like with about 3 minutes of polishing. The brown crap on the key is tobacco residue, and with some elbow grease it will clean up just fine.

The key has a tin nameplate, which is appropriate for the year of manufacture. I put the lever back in place, and it works very well. I need to take time this weekend to clean it up, it should shine like new money.

So what’s the appropriate feedback I should leave with the seller? As a seller myself, I dislike giving negative feedback automatically. The seller accepted returns, but I found the damage minimal, and the value of the key high. I don’t plan to return it! Despite the poor packing job, its a little humbling to think that this 70 year old key has survived, and is ready to serve another 70 years.

I’ll probably leave the seller positive feedback, but let him know he needs to be more careful when he ships dense, heavy objects like a bug.

Enough of tonight’s rant; tomorrow is another day.

73 de KY4Z … SK dit dit ….

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