• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Why!!!!

bwicklund

Member
Found a nice, relatively non-yellowed 15" Multi Scan Apple Color Display for a really good price… The owner shipped it in a over sized box with nothing but a few newspapers to protect it while it traveled across the country.

IMG_4596.jpegIMG_4597.jpegIMG_4598.jpegIMG_4599.jpeg
 

kitsunesoba

Well-known member
Jeez, that's brutal. Sorry that happened. Will you be seeking a refund? I think I would.

It's because of possibilities like this that my shopping for CRTs and AIO macs has been local, even if the selection here is crappy.
 

joshc

Well-known member
That sucks. People just don't know how to package stuff properly. I've never shipped a CRT but have shipped plenty of brittle Macs and compacts but they require so much packaging. I bought a Sun Sparcstation which was damaged in the post for the same reason - hardly any packaging around it, I ended up getting a partial refund as at least the machine was mostly intact. In your case however I'd be seeking a full refund as that's really wrecked.
 

MacKilRoy

Well-known member
I don’t remember what it was exactly, but I received a Mac that was mint when it was bought on eBay and it arrived completely destroyed. The seller literally put one layer of brown paper around it and placed it inside a box 1.5x the size of the Mac. You can guess how that turned out.

When I contacted the seller, they claimed they had never shipped a computer before. To me, it would be common sense to protect it more than that regardless of what it is. I mean, I’ve never shipped a Ming vase before but if I did I would protect it.

It sucks that terrible sellers are responsible for this vintage historic equipment being taken out of circulation only due to negligence on their part.

In my case the seller just instantly refunded me which meant no hassle. But I still didn’t get my nice condition Mac. Your seller should instantly refund you. It doesn’t get you the nice monitor you bought but it should be a lesson for the seller.
 

Cedsrepairs

Well-known member
Happened to me multiple times,
Recently a powerbook duo 230C

Screen was "exploded " when I opened the box

Vintage elec & shipping is not easy
 

EvilCapitalist

Well-known member
Shipping damage always sucks. In this case I agree with everyone else that you should get a full refund. Not knowing how to ship something is no excuse.

The problem I'm seeing more and more of now is that people have gotten so spoiled by Amazon and many other large companies offering free shipping that they don't understand how much things actually cost to ship and will immediately skip a listing that displays costs that are "too high" in their minds. The days of shipping computers across the U.S. for under $50 are long gone but good luck telling that to anyone today, and that's before you get into anything exceptionally fragile.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I agree, the costs are insane but for something that is valuable, it pays to "do it right." If i was going to buy a machine that was $250, and they wanted $90 for shipping, that would make sense. I only balk when something that is, say, $25, and then they want $90 shipping. I am sure it does cost $90 to properly ship it, but I just can't justify it to myself to do.

That monitor looks pretty darn sad, but you might get a salvage out of it: I have the same monitor that has the usual cracks of that era, and I someday am planning to take it out and enclose it in a custom plexiglass enclosure. Perhaps you could do something similar.
 

jessenator

Well-known member
it pays to "do it right."
And herein lies the problem with eBay (sellers). Too many are just in to make a quick buck. Some would rather see something trashed than spend enough time and care to enable the person who'd be happy with to actually have it.

Not naming names, and not saying OP's seller was one, but there are a lot of hodge-podge sellers. And they don't give a hot !#$@ about anything they're selling, only about how much they can get for it.

On the other side, we've seen recounted on our forum the kind of buyers who scam the seller: claiming a broken-in-shipping item, the box of which is returned with completely different (junk) contents. Among other problems... disguising buyers remorse as "not as described" et al. comes personally to mind.

"Right" isn't in their ethical lexicon.

If I was to be fair, however, a lot of these sellers just don't have the intimate knowledge that we enthusiasts do: a lot of case and monitor plastics are fragile by nature: not hard-wearing after years of degradation, et cetera. That said, the packing of OP's purchase is just negligence.


I'm just glad we have a trading post where, for the most part, people care about what they're buying and selling alike. :)


Sorry to hear about your situation, OP. Hope the system can "do right" by you in this case.
 
Last edited:

bwicklund

Member
This buy was a risk, normally the eBay sellers would have labeled a monitor in this condition for 200$ (you know, it says Apple) so this guy had no idea and basically it was just an old monitor to him (which is what it is). He was asking 30$ took 25$ with 50$ to ship…. It was low financial risk but given that he didn't really know what it was and his low quality pictures I took a gamble. He instantly refunded me the full cost, so all is good. Got/Found a NOS Viewsonic the next day.

IMG_4600.jpeg
 

volvo242gt

Well-known member
That blows. At least, he did refund the money.

Someone once did send me an older Sony receiver in a box about 1.5x the size with a box flap for "packing material". Surprisingly, it did survive, albeit, with a loose front panel and some "outie" dents on the lid. Wasn't too thrilled about it. I guess the seller was annoyed that it sold for only $36, plus shipping, so he put zero effort into packing it. Response was "sold as is" when I messaged him about it. Even with the warts, it still works, though. Eventually, I'll find a parts unit to grab the pieces necessary to undo the damage.
 

CC_333

Well-known member
@volvo242gt Out of curiosity is your username the car you actually own??? If so I am jealous and want to make you a offer?!??!?!
I'm pretty sure it is!

My mother used to own an '82 244 DL, and it was really a nice car. Sadly, it was hauled it off to the scrap yard around 2007-2008. Given how they're becoming sought after, I very much regret doing that now!

But it's just as well, as now we no longer have space for it.

Should we get some space, and if time/money allows, it sure would be fun to get one and convert it to an EV instead of simply buying a "new" EV; I think most new cars are rather ugly and undistinctive looking, and it seems to me that EV conversions are a suburb way of reusing an otherwise obsolete, but subjectively much better looking older car without it wasting away in a scrap yard and polluting the environment that much more.

Anyway, back to the subject: That's a nice ViewSonic CRT!

I was given an Optiquest Q71, and it's a pretty decent CRT from 2002, and if I don't mind eye-killing flicker, it can be pushed to HD resolution (1920x1440), though any text is unresolvable because the practical limit with a refresh rate better than 60 Hz is somewhere around 1400x1050, which is still pretty impressive for a fairly typical 17" CRT.

c
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
@volvo242gt Out of curiosity is your username the car you actually own??? If so I am jealous and want to make you a offer?!??!?!
Ive got an absolutely mint condition arctic blue 245 imported from the south, so no rust. They are great. And you can fit a bunch of Macs in them :)

To kind of continue this thread, it's luck of the draw. I bought a fragile antique packed with nothing, and it arrived safe. I bought an Apple CRT that was packed decent but smashed. A thing I always do when packing these is have the CRT face down to take the weight off internally.
 

chillin

Well-known member
@volvo242gt Out of curiosity is your username the car you actually own??? If so I am jealous and want to make you a offer?!??!?!
Hey bewicklund, I have a silver 1984 factory intercooled 242 turbo with less than 200K miles that I'm about ready to let go of. Engine is great. Turbo still whinneys, but it should probably be replaced. Syncronizers in 2nd gear are bad, so it will slip out of second when clutching, but that actually improves performance. Used to be not hard to find a M46 for $400 out of a wreck, but they're probably getting rare. Tires have less than 10K miles on them. In for repair for a broken headlight switch and the drivers side window motor. Moonroof assembly probably needs pulled apart and reassembled, but I can still get it open and closed. Let me know if you're serious.
 

Attachments

  • 6ADB8AB2-B71D-46C0-BBAF-B5BDBF4CE7FD.jpeg
    6ADB8AB2-B71D-46C0-BBAF-B5BDBF4CE7FD.jpeg
    1.8 MB · Views: 14

bwicklund

Member
@chillin Thats beautiful. I recently "upgraded" to a 91 4Runner so I am not actually taking on any more vintage care projects.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_4573.jpeg
    IMG_4573.jpeg
    11 MB · Views: 10

chillin

Well-known member
Cool! We can both race the Paris-Dakar! FWIW, I think mine is the nearly same as a GT, with a different grill and lights (circa 84 style), as well as the Lambda Sond emissions thing, an overdrive (5th gear is it's own little transmission on the back of the M46), which is nice on the highway, and electric locks and windows, the fuel pump is different, and I have the intercooler. Some GTs have a flat hood, those are popular, aftermarket fiber flat hoods are cheap, my hood is heavy steel circa 84 style, one of the very last coupes in the 240 series Volvo ever made, ever, rolled off the line in Sweden in Spring 1984 when they were already switched to the 85 models, which were all 4-door, and from then on. After they discontinued, then brought back the 240 series, they were all 4 door sedans. It performs, though modern consumer cars are a lot faster than they used to be, it keeps up but can't embarrass. It used to be a sleeper, but now everyone drives so fast, so it keeps up. It isn't a project car, it needs to be a daily driver for the $500/yr maintenance schedules. I just couldn't get my hand back into the dash to install the replacement light switch, squeezed in before to remove it, then swelled, and I couldn't get it back in. Local pro said no problem. So I had him work on the window motor. Other than the sun roof needing the business, and a paint job, the car is tip top.

Sorry for the OT everyone! Tolerance appeciated!
 

CC_333

Well-known member
@chillin Those old Volvos are quite indestructible and will run literally forever if properly maintained. They're not particularly prone to rusting, are they? I wouldn't think so, given that they're designed for very harsh Swedish winters.

I wish we still had ours. It was severely neglected, but it had a straight and fairly clean body, so it was could've been salvageable by someone with the proper know-how (I hope someone, somewhere found it at the scrap yard and gave it the restoration it deserved).

Anyway, let's get back on topic now!

c
 

volvo242gt

Well-known member
@volvo242gt Out of curiosity is your username the car you actually own??? If so I am jealous and want to make you a offer?!??!?!
Had a 1982 242 Turbo with the GT front end on it for a while. Actually, two - first one was silver, but became totaled in 2002 when a Dodge RAM decided it wanted to turn left; second was a black version with the rare 1980 GT black flathood from Canada. Right now, I have a black 1982 242 Turbo that still has the stock hood setup.

- first 242
- second 242, dirty because winter

- current 242.
 
Top