Too many people have received packages in the mail that contain damaged goods. Who is responsible can be difficult to determine and to receive any compensation or satisfaction is tedious and often unsuccessful. The post office usually gets the blame - hard to prove otherwise, but they are not necessarily responsible every time. Personally, I have had customs inspect a package and not repack it with any care; other times it could be the sender. I confess. I am here to say, I am guilty of such an offence.

Several years ago I was recruited to do a fetch and carry of a pricey little insulator from the Mid-Ohio show and deliver to a good friend, Robin Plewes in Ottawa. As always, the Mid-Ohio show was great. I returned with insulators of my own as well as the one for Robin. All was going according to plan and then, unfortunately, I had an irresistible idea how to liven things up a bit. I had brought the insulator with me from Ohio but the last leg of the trip would be by Canada Post. Many moons ago, when online sales were just beginning, it was my disappointment to receive a box only to find that one of the first huge foreign royal purple glass insulators I had purchased, had arrived damaged beyond repair. I was upset and disappointed. My idea to liven things up now, involved taking a small glass pony insulator about the same size and break it into several pieces, then put it in an old tin can. When you shook it, it sounded like the can was half full of marbles. Perfect ! I got the cardboard box to send it in, but before I packed it, I addressed it, set it on the floor and stomped it to near death. Then I put the can in, carefully packed it, then mailed it. I sent Robin an email saying how carefully I had packed it, double safety with it being inside a tobacco can, and I was certain it would arrive safe and sound. I could only imagine the thoughts going thru his mind when his wife, who would be picking it up at the post office, would call him at work and say there might be a problem - was this package supposed to rattle ?? Even if she opened the package, she would not be aware that the insulator was not the one he was expecting, would only be able to tell him, It's all in pieces ! Good plan until the post office screwed things up, this time in reverse. Normal delivery time is 5-7 days from here to Robin's. My plan required mailing a second box containing the purchased insulator on the fourth day after mailing the imposter. The reason being that when Robin asked - and believe me he would- asked WTH was going on, I could truthfully let him in on the joke and that the good one was already mailed and he would have it in a day or two. A good joke until the post office actually delivered the package in three days. As far as I knew, the imposter was still enroute when Robin sent the expected WTH email days ahead of schedule. To my chagrin, I still had his insulator sitting in front of me. I couldn't cover my A$$ and say it was on it's way, and so now the possibility that I was actually trying to pull a fast one will forever exist. I always consider something, anything can and will go wrong- as many things do in my life. So as an added precaution, I had carefully chosen a replacement insulator of a totally different CD, colour, and embossing which I managed to leave mostly intact. A good joke depends entirely on the perfect delivery. In this case the timing could not have been much worse.

This is a story about the source of my slightly misguided inspiration.

Many moons ago, when online sales were just beginning, it was my disappointment to open a box to find that one of the first glass insulators I had purchased, had arrived damaged beyond repair. It seemed well packed and so how it got dismembered seemed somewhat peculiar. The box seemed undamaged. It just seemed off, somehow, but I couldn't put my finger on it. There were too many pieces for me to display it even as a specimen. I closed the box and set it away to deal with it on another day. The seller argued it had been well packed - not his responsibility. My problem was with the post office and no, there was no refund forthcoming.

and many of you can guess how dealing with the post office on an international shipment turned out.

I'm thinking this was close to thirty years ago. I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but my memory of this is quite good. I came across the box recently on a a rainy day, while packing things up for auction. I took it out of the original wrappings and laid out all the pieces, even the dust and chips. Working one piece at a time I glued it slowly back together with crazy glue. Not pretty, but I really didn't care. So I have it all together and now I find a single piece, maybe 1/4 inch or so, missing. Interesting that it's not in the box. I had never removed the pieces from the box before; I had only opened the box to discover the carnage then closed it up again in disgust.

Only one place that piece could be.

I remember it came from California, and it was a Yahoo auction that I won, but I've long since forgot who I bought it from which is probably a good thing. The paper wrapping on the box was not kept. It's times like this that I swear that I should never throw anything out. But I do and so often it comes back to bite me.

The seller had packed up and sent me a previously broken insulator, is the only explanation. And he successfully pulled it off. Had I not tried to glue it back together and discovered the missing piece- the one, that for some reason, that he had not included, I would have never known. [id=601140716;next episode]

I'm not a betting man, but I guarantee it is a safe assumption that this 'Fail' has been perpetrated more often than any of us would like to contemplate.