Tale of e-bay woe (sort of)

[matts]

Always on the sniff for a bargain happened across a La Cimbali Junior grinder a week or two back, stainless steel finish, light home use only etc etc.

Great, I thought. Massive 64mm burrset without that divorce inducing Super Jolly size issue, stepless adjustment, tank like build quality, quiet enough for that 5 in the morning shot. Too good to be true.

Seller had minimal feedback, one of which was negative but didn't seem much in it and he responded quickly to an e-mail query about couriering the thing to me. So decided to chance it and secured it for £102.

So after waiting for cheques to clear etc etc the thing arrived on Friday, 13kg of coffee grinder in the flimsiest cardboard box you can imagine packed in what I can only describe as wads of tissue paper Needless to say those nice men at Business Post had dropped it and the base was broken and the plug shattered. (see pic)

What made this all the more annoying was that it was *exactly* as described, if not better. There was hardly any coffee in it, let alone stale oils, burrs as sharp and shiny as you like. Miraculously all the far more fragile plastic pieces like the doser etc were totally unscathed.

Nice chaps at La Cimbali will do you a replacement base plate for £68+VAT! ouch, but mercifully are going to pull one off a parts machine for me for £30 which the seller and I are negotiating about currently.
I'm still pretty happy with the whole thing all in all as once I get the new base on it it'll be perfect.

The seller isn't a bad guy and I'm glad I took a chance on low feedback as I got a bargain, but getting the packaging message through is tough.

Cheers
Matt

[tisri]

It's remarkable just how tricky it can be to package bulky and heavy things properly - our local post office sells bubble-wrap in rolls although a lot of places seem to only sell it in sheets (and small sheets at that). I guess a lot of people don't want to tell their buyer that the price of shipping is high because of £20 worth of bubble wrap. I'd love to know how hard they dropped your grinder to shatter the plug like that.... that's some achievement!

It's ironic really - the expanded polystyrene beads are such a pain to get rid of yet when you want to ship something yourself you just can't get them anywhere!

Personally if I need extra padding I use a few handfuls (read: several or more as required) of paper chippings from my shredder.

[simonp]

Needless to say those nice men at Business Post had dropped it and the base was broken and the plug shattered.

Surely thses same nice men should be picking up the bill for the repair then

[matts]

That nice coverall 'inadequately packaged' which is pretty hard to disagree with has got them off the hook

[matts]

UPDATE:

Seller is picking up most of the tab for the new base, a deal I can live with