[JemmyPaeg]

I purchased an 1998 JPM 90 HAM a couple weeks ago from a seller in Australia. It was shipped with 3 day worldwide shipping to Canada.

Long story short after 2 weeks of it being lost and UPS overseas support refusing to put me through to anybody past a supervisor, I finally got a call from a Canadian rep. Turns out that all tracking updates past California were fabricated by UPS. According to the rep if a package is not in transit as expected they continue to make fraudulent updates of where the projected path of transit will be.

The instrument never left California apparently, is lost, and a claim now being made. They have given up on finding it.

I suspect the instrument was stolen, as there is no way a guitar sized box just vanishes into thin air. Even if the label was damaged it's a very identifiable box, though the amount of effort they ever put into finding it is suspect.

I'm posting in several places in hopes that if one of these goes for sale in the near future I can cross reference serial numbers. I'll probably be taking legal action against UPS for this. Losing a package is one thing, but fabricating tracking updates and the amount of my time wasted is another. Over 10 hours on the phone, 2 weeks of added stress, and I'm out a $4000 instrument and $1500 between the shipping costs and border fees, when it never even arrived at the border. UPS claims process will likely take another month, so I will be down $5500 for close to 2 months. If it was indeed lost instead of stolen and they'd given me any support when I original called; a week prior to launching an investigation. Perhaps it would have been found.

I've been searching for one of these guitars for well over 5 years now in the condition this one was in. I've never even seen one in person. After this I've given up my search.

 

[Rich]

I can feel your pain but you're not looking at the process realistically. I wasn't aware they would add non existent scans en route, that's definitely disturbing, but if you think they can just walk into a room and point out your package I doubt you're understanding there are 1000's of packages with destroyed or lost shipping labels that end up in a central warehouse in any given month. They deliver 20 million packages a month. Undeliverable packages go up for blind auction several times a year and that's how they clear out the mountain of material. Many times this is as much the fault of the shipper when they use a printed paper label and stick it in one of those clear packs and just stick it on the box, when hitting any other box at the right angle will rip that pack open and all delivery information is lost. Much less, trucks crash, fires destroy, etc. etc.

I find it extremely odd you had to pay customs on it if it was lost days earlier, but they do preclear all cross border shipments.

 

[JemmyPaeg]

Prior to being sent to their central warehouse packages with damaged labels are opened, documented, and sent to a lost and found section of their warehouse, they then get logged into a system so that when a package is realized lost they can go through a sorted list and find it. The label in this case was very well secured and protected in plastic.

The experience as a whole is what has made this so problematic however. I'll give a brief cliffnotes to help me vent.


-2 weeks ago the guitar is shipped.
-A day later I receive a phone call wanting me to authorize UPS to clear the package on my behalf, I agreed.
-Next day they called asking for fees, I immediately paid them.
-4 hours after paying the fees I receive a notification stating the shipment has an exception and fees must be paid.
-I immediately call in and have an overseas support member tell me the shipment is still arriving the next day and the fees probably didn't get processed yet.
-The delivery day has arrived, and I get 3 more notifications asking me to pay the fees, I call in again twice during the day and provide the reference number stating these are already paid.
-Later in the day I get a phone call again asking for fees from a Canadian rep, after explaining the previous situation he responded with "Agh, all right yeah somebody screwed up, I'll phone you back".
-I never received a phone call.
-I call again after the weekend and now they've finally acknowledged the fees are paid, and say the shipment is in transit and should arrive any day.
-I get 3 more notifications asking for payment of fees.
-I call in and speak to a supervisor, she calls me back and says the shipment is in transit and will be delivered the next day.
-I call the next day and demand to have the supervisor's notes read to me, she lied about it being delivered next day, the only information she actually received was that the local warehouse had no idea where it was and that if it showed up they'd deliver it.
-Finally an entire week after I paid the customs fees I call in again and now they inform me I must speak to the shipper to launch an investigation.
-The shipper launches an investigation.
-2 days later it's marked as under investigation.
-I call in at the end of the week for a progress update, I get escalated to a supervisor and then the "investigation" department tells me they need a proof of invoice and have not investigated anything at this time.
-After speaking to the shipper I call back in on Monday to provide the proof of invoice. They refused to transfer me to the investigation department.
-Later in the day I received a call from the true investigation department in Canada, who walked me through the entire process and what had been done to date, and we went through all guitar related products logged in their lost system. She also explains that all tracking updates past California are not physical scans, they are projected updates of where it would be travelling had it not been lost.
-It is now sent to the claims department and considered officially lost.

 

[Donovan]

Sending anything UPS or USPS... FedEx... Any of those guys is like taking your life into your own hands. I HATE it. That is actually partially whey I order everything I possibly can through Amazon. Even if the price is not any better, they will usually just ship out a new whatever and take care of the shipping issues on their end. Makes for much greater piece of mind. Of course in your instance, this would not have been an option. It sucks. We have had several things disappear over the years including some expensive stuff never to be found. Damit.

 

[JemmyPaeg]

Sending anything UPS or USPS... FedEx... Any of those guys is like taking your life into your own hands. I HATE it. That is actually partially whey I order everything I possibly can through Amazon. Even if the price is not any better, they will usually just ship out a new whatever and take care of the shipping issues on their end. Makes for much greater piece of mind. Of course in your instance, this would not have been an option. It sucks. We have had several things disappear over the years including some expensive stuff never to be found. Damit.

It's a shame it happened to this particular instrument since they're so limited. It might be fully insured, but it's not insured for the amount it will increase in value over the years, or my headaches, or not having that money in my bank account for 2 months. Money is one thing but this isn't a guitar that can be replaced.

 

[Michael_LIS]

One is up for sale on Reverb in Australia.

reverb.com/item/17096271-ibanez-jpm90ham-john-petrucci-signature-limited-edition-guitar

 

[sepulchrave]

One is up for sale on Reverb in Australia.

reverb.com/item/17096271-ibanez-jpm90ham-john-petrucci-signature-limited-edition-guitar

Wow, they must grow on trees in Australia, who'd have thought it.