Picked these form Post office earlier today. And once again I could see with my bare eyes that there is going to be records with damaged corners. I was not wrong (once again).
From this day on when I’m going to purchase any record I’ll do this:
Contact the sellers and suggest that I’m ready to pay more if they can promise me that they do everything that the record will arrive secured. Ask them to add carton stiffeners, bubble wrap etc. And I’m ready to pay extra if they decide to use those mailers with bumper zones (I know that those are expensive but I’m ready to pay that too). I’ll do all this even though it’s not my fault if record is packaged incompletely and arrive damaged.
Package 1.

On the top of the pile we can see this big carton letter (these are usually used by British..). So let’s take a closer look of this one. First few pictures of the mailer (or can we even call it a mailer..)




And as we can see, all corners has taken some damage during shipping.. And next we can see few pictures of the cover itself.


Bends. In the other picture it is not as visible as the bend on first picture. These “mailers” are the worst anyone can use (I have seen Rocket Recordings using these and it’s interesting to see how damaged my upcoming Goat’s live album will be). Not happy with this one.
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Package 2.
This came from The States. Holding this in my hands reveals that what ever this package is holding, it’s moving freely around the package.. So I expect that this item is not wrapped in bubble wrap etc.

Let’s see some pictures of the mailer’s corners..


Yep, doesn’t look very promising. The thing is that I paid quite lot of this (deluxe) item and it is already sold out. Let’s take a look what we got inside.



Three of four corners ruined. And that is not all, a seam split..

There was not any kind of carton stiffeners nor bubble wrap or anything to secure the album. JUST AN ALBUM IN THE BOX.. I’m seeing RED right now!!
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Package 3.
I’m so damn angry at this moment. But lets see the package number 3. and what it is holding in.

From outside the package looks pretty fine. There is just one problem. The item inside the mailer is moving so I expect that there are no carton stiffeners etc.

I was right with this one too. No carton stiffeners or bubble wrap of any kind. Amazingly just ONE corner of the cover has bump.. but sad to say, this is not enough.
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Package 4.
Let’s see the package number four, and in this point I have lost my hope with these totally.

Quick look and it does not seem that bad but let’s take closer look..



Three of four possible corners does not look fine to me anymore. Opened the package and no carton stiffeners but there was little piece of bubble wrap around the record.. and it is just amazing that only one corner has taken minimal damage, with this little bump I can live.

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Uuuuhhh.. This is what it seems to be nowadays. It seems that artists and companies, who are selling and shipping records to fans and customers, do not have respect towards their customers. Or is this just lack of common sense when it comes to shipping items around the world.
At least three out of these four companies/artists will have email from some angry customer within few days. I do not have to accept this.
And once again, feel free to comment if you like
Sincerely, MugWumb.
Here are related posts about this issue:
little post about vinyl mailers..
About packing vinyl records… part xxxxxx
more about packing vinyl records… part xxxxx2
pile of packages i picked up this morning..