Monday, Dec. 21, 2015, 1:30 p.m. — Well, Christmas is a time of giving, right? I think I have just received the Nightmare Before a CW Christmas in today’s postal mail.
I have struggled with trust issues when it comes to eBay sellers — does the guy selling that bug have any idea how to properly pack the thing so it arrives in one piece? Seems like every time I’ve emailed a seller about packing a key carefully, I receive a snarky reply that can be best summed up with “This ain’t my first rodeo, Bub!”
Don’t get me wrong — that’s great news; I prefer all my sellers to know what the heck they’re doing! But I forget that once you leave the confines of key-collecterhood, you’re on thin ice as far as proper packing knowledge.
The Vibroplex 100th Anniversary bug I recently won on eBay arrived today, and my spider senses began tingling immediately — I could detect too much movement inside the box, almost always a bad sign. But I’ve been wrong before, and let’s hope I am again.
The key was wrapped in some thin foam, plus a layer of used small-bubble bubble wrap, then packed with some wads of small-bubble bubble wrap in the USPS Priority box. The seller used cardboard to protect the finger and thumb piece, and they were undamaged. But the other end of the bug didn’t fare so well.
This key had a bug tamer attached to it, with two large weights — one on the keying lever and a second on the tamer. Well, there was no provision for securing the lever nor were the weights and tamer removed. So what happened was the weight of the bug hammered the end of the keying lever — over and over, apparently — until the main spring broke.
Of all the damage I’ve seen in bugs I’ve purchased over the years, this was the first time I’ve ever had the main spring broken in shipping. But without sufficient packing, the entire weight of the key was banging away at the weighted end of the keying lever.
Damn.
Oh, the broken weighted end of the lever banged away at the Vibroplex nameplate, denting and scratching the hell out of it. The bug tamer also beat the paint off the rear edge of the base. Not horribly, but any paint loss on a 100th Anniversary key is — to me — a big deal.
RETURN? FIX? REPLACE? So now its time to write that gawd-awful email — you know the one — where I tiptoe between going all-out postal (pun intended) on the seller for really poor packing and damaging my precious key, or politely and diplomatically asking the seller to make things right.
The simplest thing is to pay for a new keying lever — $66 plus shipping — but I’m not holding my breath. Another option is to repair it, though I have never attempted the repair. But the repair option doesn’t account for the other damage to the key. I could simply send it back — the simplest option, yes, BUT (and there’s always a BUT) there’s one problem: I want to keep the key.
For now, returning it isn’t an option. My desired option is to have the seller replace the keying lever with a new one. I can live with the other damage (actually, I’ve already decided this key will be the 100th Anniversary key I’ll keep at my operating position in perpetuity); what I want is some jack to pay full or partially the cost of said keying lever.
Another problem is the fact the seller didn’t make a helluva lot of $$ on the deal (unless she bought it in a box of stuff at an estate sale). The keying lever replacement cost is more than half what I paid for it, and the seller may not be willing to eat that profit just to keep some whack-a-doodle key collector off his or her ass.
Of course, the seller’s simplest option is to just say “ship it back on your dime for a refund.” Yeah, I could do that. But you know what? I’ve NEVER returned any key, damaged or undamaged, for any reason. My shack is like a black hole for CW keys and keyers of all makes, models and types … they enter and never leave (my wife has warned me that she may be the one leaving … just joking, right honey??).
So what to do — ship it back or keep it and probably fund the replacement lever myself? What I should do is this — purchase the lever and also upper and lower jeweled pivots. I can upgrade the key to the deluxe pivots, though I’ll need to add the braid that electrically connects the lever to the pivot frame.
If Vibroplex announced today they will be taking orders for new 100th Anniversary keys, I would send it back to the seller in a heartbeat. But as it is, I’m going to try to find a way to work with the seller. I haven’t given feedback, and I haven’t threatened to give the seller bad feedback, but I could I guess. I alway prefer to work something out, which I think the seller would prefer anyway. But who knows?
I’ll report back from the negotiations with any progress or compromise agreements. Wish us both luck.
73 es CUL … de KY4Z SK …. dit dit ….