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I dunno...we had a UPS problem awhile back when they demolished a $2,000 rifle in-transit. When the customer's FFL recieved the gun, the barrel was protruding out of the box. Bear in mind, this is double-boxed, stuffed with newspaper, and mummified with strapping tape. When you're shipping an A-Bolt, you take no chances.
The second thing the FFL noticed, after the protruding muzzle, was that the front sight was broken off. Not simply missing, but broken cleanly off, about 1/16" above where it meets the barrel. That takes a lot of force.
When he opened the box, he discovered that the barrel and reciever had been slammed so hard that the stock was cracked in two places; the wrist had a 4" crack running from just behind the reciever all the way to the cheekpiece, and the toe/spur of the stock was nearly broken off.
$2,000 and a previously-satisfied customer, down the drain.
After doing about two weeks worth of detective work, we discovered that the package in question had, in fact, been dropped more than forty feet and landed on a forklift. Landing on the forklift had broken off the front sight when the gun struck, and then when it fell off the forklift, it landed squarely on the exposed muzzle. Some asshole dropped it while trying to load it onto a conveyor, had retrieved it, and had then sent the visibly damaged package ( now readily identified, for thieves, as a gun ) on its' way.
Then UPS refused to honor our insurance. The recieving FFL, not knowing what to do, had contacted us first instead of UPS...so UPS said he'd waited too long, and that -he- must have destroyed the gun.
We ate a $2000 loss, probably lost a customer, and havn't used UPS since. The rifle, a Browning A-Bolt in .300 Winchester Magnum, was beyond use except for spare parts. The barrel, front sight, stock, magazine housing, and trigger-gaurd were all sufficiantly damaged as to be unuseable. We ended up with a marginally-useable reciever and not much else.
Trust me, if you want UPS/UPS/FedEx horror stories, talk to a gun dealer.
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