Similar to what fly guy relates, I had a heavy, compact, self-powered subwoofer delivered to me in the original box without apparent damage on the outside. The box must have fallen off a shelf, a pallet, or off the truck somewhere in shipment and landed squarely on the side on a flat surface like a cement floor or asphalt road - no punctures or bent corners, but inside the double-box container the 1-inch MDF enclosure was cracked in several places and the magnet had snapped off of the driver's cast aluminum 'basket.' The very heavy magnet was now free to roam around inside the enclosure and 'crunch' on the built-in amplifier electronics during the remainder of the journey. The package was left at my door while no one was home.

FedEx wanted to brush me off, "No damage to the box on the outside? Shipper must have shipped you a damaged item. Not our fault." Very, very fortunately I had insisted that the seller take pictures of the item on the day he packed it. Not only of the item, but of every step in the process of packing it in the double-box container. Once the seller made a claim and included about eight of the images showing that a perfect conditon item was indeed carefully and properly packed, and once I sent about six images showing the damage, FedEx approved the claim. Somewhere between two and six weeks later, I was re-imbursed.

If you buy or ship anything worth more than $50 that is not brand new from the manufacturer, take pictures as if you you knew you were going to court - unless you want to risk more than $50.

Oh, the FedEx reimbursement doesn't include returning the demolishing fee, oops, I mean shipping fee, that FedEx originally charges.