Wanna smash a CRT? Let Australia Post do it.

Post a carton of nitro-glycerine and see what they do with that............................

They advised me that my parcel would have to survive a minimum 2 metre drop onto a concrete floor as the parcels often fall off the end of the conveyor when the staff don't get to the parcel in time.

A guy I know swears that they empty steel bins full of parcels into the back of trucks using a forklift type machine.

On Sun, 10 Sep 2006 01:05:14 +1000, Bob Parker put finger to keyboard and composed:

The morons at Australia Post are too stupid to understand that an article the size of a Reader's Digest can easily fit through an opening the size of a Silicon Chip mag. It seems that nobody bothered to screen these idiots with a square-peg-in-a-round-hole IQ test. As for shipping damage, the mistake you made was to identify it as fragile.

What bugs me is that no carrier will accept responsibility for the goods they are paid to carry. The law expects *you* to insure yourself against *their* negligence.

Based on my negative experiences with Australia Post, and with various couriers, especially TNT, I can't recommend any carrier. There are too many thieves, too many idiots, and too many lazy and malicious bastards.

- Franc Zabkar

Based on my experiences of doing contract jobs for transport/freight companies I can assure you they are all the same. When you have minimum wage, drug smoking casual staff driving the forklifts and throwing the parcels around you are bound to get damage. Its for this reason that you can make shitloads of money doing maintenance and selling replacement parts to these companies!!!

Also based on my experiences of doing contract work, customs are by far the worst of the lot.

At the end of the day, if you want compensation then buy insurance. Unfrtunatly there is not much more you can do.

BTW: The worst I have seen is DHL, Toll Ipec. Australia post use a lot of contracters, and that is where the problems lie. The auspost mail handling facilities are actually fairly good.

Someone has to come out with a good story I guess. I've shipped hundreds of fragile electronic items through Australia post, never had a single problem.

On the lost/stolen side of things, I've shipped thousands of items through Aust Post and never had a single one gone missing.

I've probably jinxed myself now right?

Dave :)

"Bob Parker"

IOW - how do you know when the damage happened.

BTW

Is there any indication on that label of where the CRT was made?

I see a lot of Chinese made valves with fractures in the glass where no impact has occurred.

....... Phil

G'day Phil, A mate of mine happened to have one he'd used a little bit then didn't need again, so I bought it off him. It was working fine for months before he carefully packed it up and sent it to me by registered post which automatically has insurance up to $100. It looks like the electron gun assembly flexed sideways and fractured the glass where two of the electron gun supports touch it. Yeah, the CRT's a Chinese-made 8SJ31J which seems to be a fairly common type. I'll see if I can find a replacement. I'm gunna put the whole story including correspondence between me and Aust Post and the Ombudsperson on my website when I get the chance.

Bob

"Bob Parker" Phil Allison

Its a long trip from there to Sydney.

The electron gun has SFA mass and is supported and centred by internal metal springs.

Last CRO tube a purchased ( a spare for my BWD 821) cost over $ 400.

Maybe those Chinese tubes are prone to this.

....... Phil

A drive we designed in the late 90's had some Smashed-On-Arrival problems not long after release. The packaged unit was designed (and tested) to pass a 1.5m drop test onto concrete. to break it in a similar way we had to drop it from almost 3m. Turns out the package was able to be grasped in one hand, and couriers were quite literally throwing them. we didnt have those problems with the larger frame sizes, as they were too big and heavy to hold in one hand. I guess every now and then they missed whatever they were throwing them at.

the only solution was to re-design the packaging to make it even tougher.

Cheers Terry

Obviously you haven't been marking your packages "Fragile"! :)

Bob

I guess he didn't want them to become more of a target ?

I'll second that. TNT managed to break an ME850 amplifier carefully packed in its own custom made pinewood box with styrofoam inserts. Not only that, but what should have arrived the next day only took a week to get here. Yes, TNT ...when it absolutely positively has to get there broken (and late) - call TNT....

Cheers, Alan

On Sun, 10 Sep 2006 20:25:33 +0800, "Alan Rutlidge"

A lot of shipments we used to take from taiwan had built in breakage detectors attached to the parcel. It was a small liquid filled glass tube. If it was broken, the goods inside were assumed damaged and not accepted.

That's what everyone sending things through Aussie Post should use. But of course they'd just say the breakage detector was already broken when it was posted & deny all responsibility like they did with this CRO.

Bob

You're thinking of someone else. This is an old workmate from back when I was in Telecom, who lives in southern NSW now.

Yeh, I agree. It's not clear exactly where the glass initially broke, because 'the atmosphere has done the work' and blown quite a lot of the fragments inside the envelope. It looks like it happened under two of the gun support springs. There's a full size closeup photo at

Pricey little devils, aren't they? :-)

I'm making enquiries to see if they have any spares, but I don't think they will.

Cheers Bob

I had a holiday job with DMS once, years ago. We unpacked a large microwave antenna, and found it was broken. It had smash detectors, which changed colour when smashed (white -> red). some clever bugger had painted over them with twink.... and because we had accepted the delivery, the shipping company didnt want to know.

Cheers Terry

"Trevor Wilson"

The CRT in the BWD 821 is a " 140CGB31" by Matsushita.

My BWD 821 was bought new in August 1985.

It is 50 MHz, dual trace.

I also have the similar BWD 824 as a spare.

...... Phil