I see there are a few Ellery Queen fans out there. Yes, there are a couple of things that don't add up here. When I first opened the box, I noticed the unit had shifted out of its right foam holder towards the left and the feet on the right side were directly on the cardboard box bottom. You can see the indentations they left in the photograph of my previously posted slideshow of crime scene photos. If you still think that this puny foam provides adequate protection for a 75 pound weight, please leave the room. The left side, where the damage was done, therefore, would need to be snug in its foam holder, and it was. My initial conclusion was that the seller had damaged it by dropping it while packing (his photos were legitimate and showed an intact unit outside of its point of use) and my first communication to him suggested that was the case. His response was that the unit was perfect, as it was in his posted photos, when he packed it and that the damage must have occurred during shipping. For that to have happened, the box would have had to hit a hard surface with the side facing the front of the unit downward. Also, the unit would have had to, on impact, be cocked just a bit and outside of its foam holder so that the left front edge would hit the floor through the two layers of cardboard. The faceplate of this unit has a triangular profile with the peak at the switch location, that is why you see the damage at that location. The angle of attack of the crushed face (which, by the way is plastic) suggests this is how it hit the surface, if you look at it from the side, you don't see the damage, the worst of it faces front. To have caused that much damage, I would certainly expect to see a crushed portion of cardboard at the location of impact in roughly the shape of the damage. It is not there. I've attached two additional photos, one from the inside of the box at the location where the unit would have had to have come out of its holder and impact the box and one from the front where you would expect a crush mark near the word "VOLTAGE.". Neither of these seem to me to indicate that they were subjected to the trauma one would expect from such an incident. The left side foam holder at this location though, is cracked and crushed a bit, whereas all the other portions of both holders are intact. Could the unit have been crushed and not leave a mark on the cardboard? Most likely not, but stranger things do and have happened. Only one person knows for sure.
Regardless of whether the damage was done just before shipping or during shipping, it is there and I now own the unit. The seller has credited $200 as we agreed. I'm not happy about the experience, it was totally unnecessary. I am particularly annoyed about the fact that I advised the seller to pack the box in another box lined with insulation or peanuts, which is how I ship stuff worth 1/20 of the value of this unit and he ignored the advice. He had it shipped to him as was shipped to me and it arrived intact, so the extra work was not necessary, he claimed. There was another UPS label on the box, so this was the case. Clearly, he got lucky the first go around. If the box would have been properly packed, then there would be no question as to when the damage, if it showed up at all, happened.
The damage appears to be entirely cosmetic, I've enjoyed the unit for the last two days and everything I've put through it sounds great which was not the case most of the time with the Adcom. I'm also rediscovering how poorly recorded so many of my CDs truly are. On to the next crisis!
Photo Link:
http://img199.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img199/3548/1246161063ix7.smil
