How many people have had arcade/pinball machines DESTROYED BY SHIPPERS?

FullThrottle

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How many people have had arcade/pinball machines DESTROYED BY SHIPPERS?

How many KLOV'ers have had a machine shipped and when it showed up it was DAMAGED beyond a minor scratch? I'm talking about bad damaged or destroyed!

I've never had a game shipped, read dozens of horror stories of shipping, so that is why I drive all over the West coast picking crap up... But I figure this would be a good topic to show people yes these things get hammered ALOT in shipping!

Pics would be even sweeter, not to salivate on your bad fortune but to show others the dangers... I can remember a few dozen posts of destroyed machines, but I wanna see 'em in one spot please. Thanks!
 
Damage is rare, though I have had friends with machines literally crushed when the shipping company tried to stack them on top of each other.

In general I've just had scratches and a busted marquee.

Only last week I had a machine show up that was crated and still damaged. It had been rammed by a forklift which smashed through the crate and damaged the machine (huge dent the shape of the forklift fork). It came from overseas so I'm currently working through the "we didn't do it...they must have" phase... (multiple companies touched the machine on route). It happened to be a rare penny arcade machine from the 1920s or 1930s so I'm not particularly happy about it.

I had a counter top machine shipped by UPS last year along with another machine. The second machine had a broken piece of glass. The first one was shattered into 4 pieces. It took 6 months, but UPS paid out in full, and I essentially bought the machine back for salvage value (which is what it was worth).

Again... I don't think damage is that common. I've shipped a lot of things, and had problems with probably 1% of them or less.
 
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I have only had a machine shipped once. It arrived today. The Driver said he did not want to bring it out, and told them they should just call me. The driver told be they were having labor disputes, and a bunch of scabs were loading the trucks. A fork lift tagged the corner:mad: Poor Satans Hollow.

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Us vs Them prototype NAVL destroyed it, the tore the entire bottom side off!
Zoo Keeper upright DTI transport dropped it off the pallet and dropped the game, dragged it across the warehouse floor and tore it all up,

So 2 bad out of probably 30 shipped so very good odds but they always seem to destroy or damage the really rare or nice condition ones.

Joe(acejedi)
 
I would say I'm 0 for 2. (give or take)

I've had NAVL show up with a pinball and then refuse to drive up my driveway (Never mind the quote included "Door to door" shipping). I live on a slight incline and it would have been impossible for me to get the pinball uphill (at the time, it was my first pinball). I never did figure out what the problem was but I got the feeling there was a lot of bad blood between the dispatcher and the drivers. Also, the game had been shipped functiohal but arrived dead.

I also had a guy once deliver a cocktail on a dolly without using straps. Said "I've got it" just before it slowly rolled off of the dolly and up and over itself down towards my door. No major damage done, but still thats never easy on a bad heart!

(FYI, it was an Up N Down cocktail that had been converted to an Arkanoid)
 
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One of the most valuable machines in my collection got shipped from Germany -- a 100 year old elephant shaped vending machine made out of thin tin. They were supposed to crate it. Instead the shipper dumped it loose in a large box with tons and tons of packing peanuts.

When it go to the U.S., Homeland Security and Customs "violated" it. The cut all four corners of the box to the floor, and everything must have spilled out. They inspected my elephant shaped vending machine and shoved the peanuts back in the box along with the elephant. Then the taped up the box with a 1-2" gap along each of the four corners.

It arrived and I saw the box. The inside of the drivers truck had a lot of peanuts and they started blowing all over the alley. The driver wasn't happy about the peanuts. I wasn't happy about my machine (I hadn't even seen it yet).

Upon opening (if that is the right word for a box that is already basically opened) the crate I saw it was missing about 4" of peanuts. My elephant had a little paint chip the size of a quarter knocked off his butt. A couple hundred bucks worth of damage I still have not fixed to this day. I got lucky. It could have been a whole lot worse.
 

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For my job we have equipment shipped from the manufacture all the time. And yes we had damaged items. The best all is the boxes will have about fifty "Fragile" stickers all over it, and we always see the boot prints from guys walking on the box. And we get the box that is torn half open by the fork lift. The boxes that have stickers that say, "This side up", and the box will be laying down on the wrong side, on the truck. Its common now, when the truck shows up, for us to call the shipper and file a claim for damage, and guess what, nothing is ever done to fix the problem, we still get the same damage time after time. Thats why I always drive to pick up my games.
 
My Gauntlet got dropped by my shipper R&L Carriers. The cab was blown apart, the monitor fell, snapped the neck and even broke a bunch of parts on the board. I think they only reimbursed me $325.
 

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I used to ship Pilot Air quite a bit (20 times in 4 years) and never had a problem, and I've already described my problems with NAVL which didn't include damage. Within the last 5-6 years I've personally picked up my games locally (within 300 miles) since I have most of the ones I wanted.
 
How many KLOV'ers have had a machine shipped and when it showed up it was DAMAGED beyond a minor scratch? I'm talking about bad damaged or destroyed!

I've never had a game shipped, read dozens of horror stories of shipping, so that is why I drive all over the West coast picking crap up... But I figure this would be a good topic to show people yes these things get hammered ALOT in shipping!

Pics would be even sweeter, not to salivate on your bad fortune but to show others the dangers... I can remember a few dozen posts of destroyed machines, but I wanna see 'em in one spot please. Thanks!

When I moved to Colorado I had two Star Wars games shipped to me, both from different sellers. BOTH of them got beat up pretty bad. Looked like the shipper stacked something on top of the cabs so the tops caved in and the sides pulled away from eachother. In both cases the monitor is what saved the rest of the cab. I ended up not having to pay for shipping for either game and managed to restore both of them.

But, working for Betson I saw tons of stuff destroyed in shipping! And were talking about BRAND NEW games.

Matt
 
I have never had any game damaged in shipping. I have received one, and shipped out 4 complete games and have 2 more going out today. Packaging doesn't seem to matter either. I have gone from not doing shit to package them for NAVL, to this (for a different shipper):

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I would assume it is all luck and which shipper you choose.
 
I used to live in Central Florida for 26 years, UPS has a warehouse building (4) of them in 1 location. FULL . they auction off pallets of boxes. They stack 10 - 100 boxes per pallet depending on size of boxes wrap in plastic and auctioned off to the highest bidder. hundreds of pallects, they do this 2-3 times a year. The packages (boxes are damaged , shipping labels have been lost during route. Did see a arcade there one time on a pallet (cocktail) fork had went all the way through it.


USPS does the same thing , but its location is in Alanta,Ga
letters and packages in mail carts auctioned off.
 
I shipped a Space Fury cocktail one time.
The monitor board shook loose from it's mount, which was no big deal, but the buyer plugged it up and fried something before he inspected it.
 
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