Model Railway Forum

Perhaps you noticed I sold a set of mine buildings to somebody in El Passo Texas and it arrived in perfect condition after traveling several thousands of miles around the globe. I expect you are wondering what I am getting at. Well the other day I purchased on Ebay an Bachman Engine shed. It was posted off quite quickly but when it arrived it was the poorest packed box I had ever seen with no bubble wrap just a couple of sheets of newspaper over the top of the shed and the whole thing was just falling around inside the fabricated box which was not big enough either so the Engine shed suffered couple of vent stacks broken off and a bit of other damage.
Fortunately it was repairable so I fixed it up in the afternoon. Why are some sellers so stupid that they cant even pack up a simple thing like a rectangular building safely. Daft or what. I got a whole Mine to Texas USA and this bloke could not even get one small building posted a short distance in Britain.

When I sold locos and rolling stock I reckon it took the buyer the best part of a day to unpack them.

I can vouch for that Brian, john

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:18 am When I sold locos and rolling stock I reckon it took the buyer the best part of a day to unpack them.

Same here, lots of foam cut to size/shape and bubble wrap.One loco per shoe box lol.

I agree with you Sandy, a few layers of bubble wrap inside a decent box then wrapped in parcel tape is my preferred method, and not difficult or expensive.
Mind you, my parcels may raise an eyebrow or two with the post office - they resemble the packages often found by police sniffer dogs.

When I was in my teens I made a few wagons to sell and unfortunately some of the ones that sold were crushed by the postal system. I did not realize how brutal it was to post things.
I was later a postman for a while, but the most difficult part were some letterboxes. You know those small parcels where DVD's or videos "Should" fit! Haha. The issue is one has very little time and yet one can be waiting ages in the hope that someone is there...
Oh. One house on one round I did I kept putting notices for them to collect as they were not there, and towards the end of doing the round the owner caught up with me (They were usually in work) and said "We leave the bathroom window open so you can put parcels in". Was always videos they had bought at that house, as I could tell from the box they were in. So this one day just before the job came to an end I had another video box to deliver and I remembered what he had said, so I reached up and opened the window. I tried to reach so that it would go on their windowsill but I was too short, and "Sploosh". Straight down the pan! Nothing I could do about it. No one there. Kinda glad the job ended a few days later!

But I have seen inside a parcel delivery companies warehouse and the amount of parcels that they handle and how they handle them to keep up and it is common to throw parcels into piles as if they didn't the time it would take them to do the job would be just too long and they would never get a chance to sleep at the end of their day. It is actually a tough line of work to be in and I am really amazed at how good it is, as if I tried to take a few parcels anywhere in the same direction, it would cost me more in fuel at the prices they work to than it would be worth (As the same price can get right across the country).
So the best advice is to wrap well. We do have a good companies and very hard working people and it is miraculous they deal with so many parcels and get the job done with so few issues. I am actually impressed at what they do and the speed that they do it.

yeah but ebay sellers are thick as **** in most cases, it's an ebay thing.

anything I buy on the site that could be damaged in transit I send a message to ensure the thick ***** pack it correctly and this also covers me as the purchaser.

Find that a bit insulting. Not most but some.

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sat Aug 27, 2022 7:30 am Find that a bit insulting. Not most but some.

Totally agree Brian, had one bad incident out of many many purchases.

I did not expect a reply like that about my purchase on ebay. The seller did say sorry and has done a partial refund now.