I would like to bring up a recent dealing I've had with Italian parts supplier Effebi, and the owner Franco Beretta. Franco can be contacted at fraber@effebisrl.eu

I would first like to say I have been a part of other orders from him that went fine. This last order did not go well and I want to make it known that in my opinion he did not handle it as I would expect.

I recently ordered 50 ribs from Effebi, they shipped them in a few days but unfortunately I took delivery of an empty shipping tube. My assumption is that during delivery the weight of the ribs busted out one end, someone then taped the tube end back up. During transit the tube was also stopped by customs, its possible they opened the tube to view the contents. I know there were ribs in there at one time as I can see imprints from the ribs in the plastic end cap.

Many unsuccessful attempts were made by me with FedEx to make a claim. Franco claims he was able to get refunded for the shipping cost as well as 22euro per kg of good lost. A roughly 250euro refund. I was not made aware of this deal until afterwards, and he did not offer me this money back until many back-and-forths. I declined.

I paid 150 euro for shipping, I was never made aware this didn't include insurance, nor was I offered a chance to pay more for insurance.

I offered to settle the matter by refunding me half the dollar amount for the goods plus all the shipping cost. I figured this was a fair compromise as the issue wasn't caused by either of us yet we both share the burden. He declined.

He has ended communication at this point, I'm left with paying about $1400 and have zero to show for it.

I wanted to make this public so that the few here who might deal with him knows how issues are handled by them. These are the facts of the transaction, one can take them however they wish.

You know I would contact the customs inspector. It sounds like they opened the package to inspect it and failed to properly reseal it. If the ribs were in the package when they opened it they should be responsible for not resealing them to arrive safely to the final destination. Did they note inspecting the contents of the package?

Unfortunately that's a road that's already dead ended.

When I was the Teague rep I sent a matched pair of Powell lifter SLE's over to be lined. UK Customs un-packed them for inspection and did not pack them well after, under lugs bounced on the stocks from London to Denver. Boy was that ugly, about 6K in damages. Thankfully my insurance covered it.

Steve, who is your insurer?

At the time it was these guys:

http://www.corevensguninsurance.com/

I am with a different company now but they were great. I was dropped for too many claims. All in shipping and all out of my control but that is another story. I have nothing but good things to say about Core-Vens.

Sounds like a huge drag. Sorry. PA24, Doug Woodin taught me to ship stuff like that in PVC pipe. With end caps duct taped, this may not have happened??

Anything can be packaged in a foolproof container, if the trouble is taken to do so. The problem is, most of those foolproof containers are heavy and cost more for shipping. Therefore, most people won't go to the trouble to bulletproof the shipping.

Then, there are the dummies who try to ship a Westley Richards percussion double from England without disassembling it and wrapping each piece separately. Like happened to me.

SRH