I bought a telephone off ebay

[persido]

I bought a phone off ebay, it came this morning.......

Scot

[Contempra]

Too bad...

[WesternElectricBen]

Ooooh,

I'm very sorry about that, I don't know what to say though, besides contact the seller. Even though, from the looks the packaging looks pretty decent.

Is this your first or second phone off eBay, as I recall you usually get your deals at antique stores?

Ben

[Dennis Markham]

Wow, what a shame.  I feel your pain.  It's happened a time or two to me as well.    That's some pretty serious breakage!

[Mr. Bones]

So sorry, Scot...

     I can truly sympathize; I won a sweet, black, soft plastic 554 less than a year ago. When it arrived, there was a single page of newspaper inserted in the medium Priority Shipping box for 'packing', and the shell consisted of over twenty locatable pieces. Still saddened by the senseless, and (totally-avoidable) loss.

Best regards!

[AE40FAN]

I'd say on average 1 out of 4 phones I receive through the mail have arrived with some kind of damage.   Sellers are clueless and postal service is careless...

[WEBellSystemChristian]

I showed my family the pictures, and they all dropped their mouths for at least five seconds. I've never had a phone damaged in shipping, but I've had a few close calls. Fortunately Western Electric built phones well enough to survive certain USPS nightmares. I can feel your pain.

[WesternElectricBen]

I showed my family the pictures, and they all dropped their mouths for at least five seconds. I've never had a phone damaged in shipping, but I've had a few close calls. Fortunately Western Electric built phones well enough to survive certain USPS nightmares. I can feel your pain.

I've been blessed with the same luck so far, knock on wood.

Ben

[persido]

Thank you all, I did contact the seller, I am waiting for a response. This is not my 1st buy from ebay I have bought several items, this is the 1st damage item from a seller.  Do sellers give payments back due to a damage items that they packed ?

Scot

[mentalstampede]

Ouch! Priority mail in a flat rate box automatically includes up to $50 in insurance for free, with the option for more.  Might be worth looking into  if any was included.

[twocvbloke]

Ouch indeed, that shell is well and truly smashed...

But on the plus side, the rest of the phone should still be salvageable, even if as spare parts, so, it's not a complete loss, but still sad to see it in pieces like that...

[JimH]

That is unfortunate.  This happened to me a few times.  I now send an email right away after I've won an auction telling the seller how to ship the telephone.  I have it saved and just copy and paste it.  I haven't had a broken phone since.

"Hello, I am the winning bidder on the telephone.  Could I ask that the telephone be packed with the handset not "on the hook", but packed in bubble wrap with the handset seperate from the base, also wrapped in bubble wrap, with enough packing all around so that it doesn't move around inside the box?  If it can move around inside the box, it will break.  If you already know this, my apologies.  I'm a collector, and I can't tell you how many I've received cracked.  If there's extra cost to ship it this way, please let me know. I don't want it to arrive damaged. Thanks, Jim"

[paul-f]

You've been lucky, Jim.

I've been including similar messages for years  It generally seems to help, but I still get damaged phones from folks who simply ignore the advice.

The photos above brought back vivid memories of a phone I received in 2007.  I recently saw the photos sent to the seller when browsing through my photo archive.  Look familiar?

In both cases, the padding was probably not sufficient to fill the empty space in the box.

[Phonesrfun]

Jim:

Look on the bright side.  The open faced fingerwheel survived!

[WEBellSystemChristian]

Jim:

Look on the bright side.  The open faced fingerwheel survived!

...and the handset plus cord!