Anyone ever deal with a "Delivery Exception: Damaged" when shipping a trombone?

[ryebrye]

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Saw this today on what is supposed to be a 42BO shipping from eBay via FedEx.

It was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but was "delayed" somewhere last night then early this afternoon switched to saying it's damaged.

I reached out to the seller to see what he knows about it (was it just the packaging damaged? Does he get a say on if they try to deliver it to me?)

The seller deals with tons of instruments, so I assume they know what they are doing with regards to packaging them up for shipping - but if someone drove a forklift through it or something they'd have no control over that...

This seller shipped it with signature required (not a big deal since I'm usually working from home) so I'm guessing they are on the paranoid side of things.

Hopefully the seller gets back to me tomorrow so I know what's going on with it.

[tbonesullivan]

I believe this is now up to the seller to resolve. Usually if something is damaged in transit and it is noticed by the carrier, it will get returned to the shipper, and delivery will not be attempted. Also as it is an ebay transaction, their terms of service may come into play regarding how they have to handle it.

[ryebrye]

Thanks for that information.

An update from my side:

The seller says FedEx hasn't contacted him at all. He agreed if it does show up or if he gets the option to tell them to deliver it anyway, that I should take a video of the unboxing and we can figure out what to do if there is any actual damage. (he's confident in how he packaged it up, and has done this a lot before)

The FedEx support on my end just keeps giving me nothing helpful. I read a few threads on what seems like a forum devoted to beer enthusiasts who describe getting this message on their package but then it still showing up later on as if nothing happened.

I did encourage the seller to try to contact FedEx and see if they will give him more information or allow him to tell them what to do with it. (other threads from different sites were even more dire and were from the seller side where the seller claimed FedEx said it was damaged and wouldn't return the original package at all... They just claimed they'd dispose of it.)

In any case I'll post what happens here as it might be an interesting data point to have for those here who ship trombones regularly.

This seller has never had this kind of issue before, and he does this a lot, so hopefully it's rare and nobody else has to deal with it.

[ryebrye]

They updated the status in FedEx and removed the "damaged" note, and now it just says "delayed". It says it's in an area close to me, and then just has the status of "delayed".

Maybe they'll deliver it today?

Certainly a weird situation.

[ithinknot]

I've known this sort of thing to happen because a box gets gashed, then gets taken off the line and taped/patched up before reentering the system, each stage of which is logged as nonsensical system messages.

If it never shows up, that's the seller's problem.

If it arrives with the packaging obviously damaged then only sign for it as damaged, photo/video the unboxing, and then deal with what you find. If this is Quinn, I'm sure you'll be taken care of one way or another.

[ryebrye]

Good news. It came and it was undamaged.

I think the original box around it got wet and they had to rebox it - it was packaged up in a pair of FedEx boxes that were taped together.

The shipping label itself was pretty wet, which is what makes me think it was the wet box thing.

The trombone itself didn't seem to have any new dents in it - just a couple minor dings put there by the previous owner.