Shipping. Hard Lesson.

@northman, no good news. No news at all in fact. My wife is the one that has been having to deal with this and it is her relative that gets the money for these components I've been selling for the estate.

Well, I was getting upset with her for not pushing UPS. It has been nearly a month from now.

She was getting fed up with me. She told me to let her handle it so I've washed my hands of it. As far as I know still no money.

It makes me mad. What UPS has done is wrong. How they have responded to it is shameful. But it is out of my hands now and I'm just trying not to think about it. And I'm less stressed out when I don't.

I will also say that getting rid of this hi-fi gear has been a miserable experience. We've sold most of it. We got less than half the new value on everything but the Aerial Acoustic 5T speakers where we got right at half their new value. For most everything else we got less than a third of the new value. All of this gear was like new, most of it current models. On top of that eBay/PayPal holds onto the payments for like a week because we have not had many sales. So between UPS and eBay I've sold about $7500 worth of gear and have gotten only about $2000 so far and all of that was on Craig's List or Audiogon sales. We've had to fend of scammers and lowballers. We had to come home from out of town to meet a buyer so he could pick up the speakers (really nice guy).

The only experiences that were halfway decent were through Craig's List oddly enough.

Anyway, we're almost done and I hope I never have to do it again. No fun.

For our efforts I kept a pair of Aerial Acoustic 6Ts. They are wonderful but I really don't need them.

Sorry to unload my first world problems. Just needed to vent.

No need to apologize at all; I asked! I'm sorry that you've had such a time with all this. Despite all the criticism of UPS out here, I'm still surprised that they are proving so hard to work with. That's unacceptable. You are absolutely right to let it go, with thanks to your wife; it's not worth all the outrage. 

I know this doesn't apply to your situation at all but I've struggled with the economics of "letting it go." Part of me feels that this is a hobby and if I can't afford to lose a piece of equipment (including to cat pee!) then I shouldn't have bought it in the first place. The other part of me wants to reach as far as I can into my bank account/credit card, risk be damned. 

In any case, I'm sorry for your experience, which sounds like no fun, all around.

Update: My wife went back to UPS Store. Still no check. They call the central office while she is there, they say the claim has been approved and that we'll get the check soon. They say 5-10 days is typical. It has been nearly a month. Anyway, its in my wife's hands and she seems infinitely patient.

However, they gave her the amp.

I got it in the original shipping box. It was a regular box. Imagine a basic moving box. Very flimsy. The unit had been wrapped once with the large bubble wrap stuff. The ones with the big individual air bags. All of them were flat. Buggers the imagination.

On the amp both of the handles on the rear were bent inward. This amp is a tank and I had to use large pliers to straighten the handles. One of the plastic speaker terminal covers is cracked. There are dents/scuffs on all four corners of the face plate.

Otherwise it looks fine. And guess what? It works. All five channels.

At this point I'm not sure what to do with it. I've decided that I do not want it. It just does not fit well in the room and is overkill for my purposes.

Not sure how something like this would sell but I might stick it on Craig's List and see what I can get for it as-is. Even $500 would be something.

I'm sorry about the check but that's great news about the amp! I've owned Bryston amps and I'm not surprised. They're built like tanks, as you say. No reason for it to go into a landfill; it probably has twenty years left on it.

Good luck to your wife dealing with UPS. 

Still no pay out on the amp. My wife goes by the UPS store every other day. Every time they say the claim has been approved. But last week they told her that they had only just then assigned an adjuster to the case (a month after the claim!) and asked her to sign a statement that the amp was un-repairable.

Why they are asking my wife, who knows nothing about audio equipment whether or not a complicated piece of electronics is repairable I have no idea. She signed it, which I think was the right thing to do. The amp is no longer in production, cost $7500 new and was sold for $2500. I suspect Bryston would charge more than that to replace the full cabinet and face plate and speaker terminal to get the amp back into the condition it was in before they trashed it. Plus, even then it would still never be worth $2500 as a device that has been damaged in that fashion.

Anyway, my wife remains patient and persistent.

At this point I'm just documenting this in the hopes that anyone reading it will avoid using UPS.