nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Power Mac G5 Shipping Problems

Arraugh. The guy who purchased my Power Mac G5 received it and found it to be not seeing the hard drives. When he opened it up he found that the drive latches were up and the drives were dislodged. Here is the message from him:

Hi Steve, I received the item. There was a bit of a scare though.
I turned the computer on and all I got was a flashing folder with
a question mark. So I started up on the OS X DVD you included
and tried to run Disk Utility. To my surprise, there were no hard
drives in the computer. So I opened up the computer and
noticed that both hard drives must have been dislodged from
the case during transportation. And both of the gates that hold
them in position were in their up position. And the bottom HD
had the interconnects damaged in the process. Fortunately, I
was able to straighten the pins and reconnect the wires and
everything seems to be working fine. Just wanted to let you
know. I am still testing the machine right now. I will keep you
posted if there are any further problems. Thanks Steve.

This is kinda frustrating. If you take a look at this photo you can see the latches holding the drives in place. I wonder if it got dropped during shipping in a combination of ways which caused the latches and drives to become dislodged?

Uggh.

UPDATE: I sent the photo of the latches and such off to the person, and he replied with this:

Yeah, it looks like the source of the problem must have been in the
shipping. The foam inside the box looks damaged. And there is a
hole in the box. I will take photos and post it up soon. But so far,
everything seems to work fine.

So, it sounds like UPS sure bounced the package around a bit.

3 Responses

  1. joiseyguy June 23, 2007

    I would have said something when I saw you packed up it for UPS but you were already done. In the future try to avoid UPS like the plague. They suck. They work EXTRA HARD at making sure your package gets damaged. I’ve shipped 100’s of packages through FedEx Ground/Home and have yet to have a single damage claim. They’re massively cheaper to boot too.

    1. c0nsumer June 23, 2007

      They didn’t seem too much cheaper this time, but I’m definitely going to use them for similar things in the future. Fortunately I think it’s all sorted out. I hope. :\

    2. kevinblanchard June 24, 2007

      That’s odd. I was about to comment that I have had nothing but trouble with FedEx. Anything major I shipped with them has gotten broken. I have not had any trouble with UPS to date. In fact after about 4 times of damaged goods with FedEx I started using UPS and have had no issues. Though I think with any of these guys it’s luck of the draw and the region you are shipping it seems.

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