It may certainly well have been, do you know for sure it was working
before DSE sent it?
Of course I can't say for certain that it wasn't already damaged,
because I wasn't there. If I was there, I'd have brought it home in my
car and none of this would have happened. But...
(1) The bloke who sent it me has been a mate for longer than you've
been alive. He'd never do anything like that. He's willing to sign a
Statutory Declaration that the CRO was working and was not damaged in
any way before he posted it.
(2) The side the CRT was shattered on was facing the top of the
case. To me it looked like that's the side the impact was on.
(3) There was absolutely no evidence that the CRO's metal case had
impacted onto anything while outside its carton. No dents, deformation
or anything, top or bottom (or anywhere else).
What was the packing like in the orginal CRO box?
Standard moulded styrofoam, more than adequate to protect against
*reasonable* transportation shocks, I'd have thought.
The photo to me shows a rather small original box, and not what I would
call teriffic packaging outside it.
In the light of what happened, obviously the packing wasn't
sufficient to protect against what it was subjected to. The sender
wasn't anticipating the kind of rough handling the carton received.
I recon you simply ran out of luck Bob, or perhaps this scope
construction has a particular weak point, shock or vibration wise?.
Yep, I sure ran out of luck. As you can see in the photos, the CRT
has protective rubber mounting rings around it. Maybe the impact
"waveform" which broke it was right at the glass's resonant frequency?
As I have said before I have shipped many fragile items including CROs by
Australia Post without any problem what so ever. But then again I am
*really* paranoid about packing.
After this, I'm going to be too!! I'll only use Aust Post as an
absolute last resort in future. I saw a posting on a newsgroup from
someone who packed up some china plates really carefully, with each one
wrapped in cloth.
After Australia Post had transported them, most of the plates were
broken. That person was as amazed as I was, at AP's ability to break
things.
I bet you didn't write "Fragile" on anything you sent, which seems
to be an invitation to them to drop the article from as high above the
floor as possible.
Aust Post are no worse than the likes
of other courier companies in my experience.
What annoys me more than the damage is the many-weeks-long
beaurocratic run-around I got afterwards, and Aust Post's attitude of
"No care and no responsibility taken".
As a last resort, a couple of months ago I wrote to AP's NSW Manager
about all this, as their website suggests. Never got a reply. Maybe the
letter got broken in transit?
Bob
