I just recieved my Esotar 430s from UPS today. They were shipped in a large box, several times the size of the actual speaker box with a lot of padding. It's a good thing because the box arrived all deformed and torn. I don't know how you would even do something like that to a package other than on purpose. You could throw a box as far as you can and not do the sort of damage that was done. If there's wasn't a foot of crush space my mids might have been damaged.
I actually used the same packaging box and materials (with a few extras from my supplies) to ship the 430. Glad to hear they got there fine, even though they were drop kicked Ace Ventura style (apparently).
OT... so far, I've not had any issues with anyone other than UPS. They lost a netbook I sold here. Buyer wound up getting refunded because I got tired of waiting on UPS to get the return to me. Wouldn't you know, 2 weeks later they "found" the package sitting on a shelf. I got it back (with refunded fees, of course) and found fingerprints all over the screen and obvious signs of use. Yea... sure... it was just "sitting" on a shelf.
The CS rep was very nice, though.
At the end of the day, companies employ people. Regular ol' Joes. They are held liable for what those Joes do, but they can't control what those Joes do. That's the problem. In these cases it's not the company. It's the jackasses who managed to get hired. And don't FOR A SECOND act like they should have caught every ******* that made it on their team. I know plenty of people even in the professional world who I question their ability to wipe their ass without making a mess of it. Much less perform their job.
