I think Naim have a central parcels contract (as you would expect), as their parcel return rates to dealers are cheaper than other way it seems.
One would hope they are assiduous in monitoring the delivery condition and recompense aspects - not that I suspect the individual drivers and handlers would treat the parcels any differently.
Understood and very sensible in the current climate.
I havenāt sorted posting, I guess naim has done this
Seems like Percy Thrower may have missed his true vocation.
as an aside, and with the advantage of living in Southampton, I would always be happy to deliver, and collect my āhigh valueā* kit rather than leave it to the tender mercies of a carrier, even if it has to be done under the auspices of a dealer.
*as as Iām an Olive guy, weāre only talking around a grand apiece here. I would be more concerned for a 552 or ND555, at the 15-20K level!
And as a long-time member of Salisbury & District Angling Club, I have to drive past the factory on my way to the river! 
I always waveā¦
Courier drivers have a pretty thankless job in todayās (un) employment times. I have seen guys really running up our road on small parcel drops from their vans. Today, Amazon Prime delivered a bamboo roll of one kitchen towel in a box four times its size with protective packaging. It was left on the door step and they rang the bell.
A couple of months ago I treated myself to a new Pioneer car stereo head unit. Just under Ā£300. Being retired I am at home most of the day. Another knock on the door. I could have opted for a local pick-up location but thatās not the point.
Any boxes I have sent via my local dealer to Salisbury always come back unmolested so there may be additional outer packaging.
If I lost the box for my CD555 head unit, now an obsolete product, it might be tricky returning it to HQ? Knowing Naim. probably not.
Copied from myself on another thread:
We used to ship encryption servers all over the world and had 20,000 out in the field. Originally, the carton had a shock label that turned from pink to blue if the box got roughed up or just dropped, and instructions for customers to refuse delivery of any unit with a blue label.
I can tell you that we had to give up on that. We tried TNT, UPS, FedEx, DHL, the lot. 100% of the shock labels arrived blue. A colleague in logistics spent a day on site with a courier collection point. Everything is dropped, thrown and dinged with impunity is what I heard. Ship gear as if you expect it to be airdropped over a jungle.
Which is why Iām 100% not going to send my 552 or 500 from Sussex to my dealer in Leicestershire to then go to Wiltshire back to Leicestershire and then back to Sussex. Iāll socially distance and deliver/pick up directly
Where possible, I would use Class A in Sheffield, who will do Naim authorised servicing and allow you to drop off your boxes in person. In some cases, you can arrange to pick them up later the same day.
Same thing happen to a friend of mine, he had his 250 DRād and one channel wasnāt working when it arrived back, sent it back to the service agent, m at that time the agent found nothing wrong then sent it back to him. Itās been working fine for about 4 years.
FedEx in the USA is the best. Iāve shipped some really large stuff, MBL amps and MBL speakers. They had to go freight and be Palletized ! But no damage. UPS on the other hand cracked the Shell of a very expensive Motorcycle Helmet! Then tried to deny my insurance claim saying it wasnāt packed right. Double boxed in original packaging
Only limitation I think is that Class A arenāt able to undertake DR work. At least, that used to be the case.
Peter
ā¦the moral of the story is: if possible, make your purchases as heavy as you can, to stop parcels being thrown around!
Or bobby trap them with mini cattle prods!
They donāt do DR conversions. Whether or not they can do servicing work on DR units Iām not sure. It wonāt be long before the earliest DR units will reach the age where they are due a recap/service, so I guess weāll find out soon enough.
Letās not get too excited about what a service actually is. It will be something along the lines of " doing whatever is necessary to prevent failure until the next service" or " bringing it back to factory standard".
So, what that means is changing out the bits that have degraded. Be that measurably or just based on time. So really that just means electrolytic caps. Maybe a few other things that I canāt think of.
So, itās not major surgery. And for something like an XPSdr for example most likely just the 5 or 6 caps in the PSU. For a 552 might be a load more though?
Itās 6 caps in a Hicap (non DR)
18 caps in an Olive XPS.
And quite probably some of the tants on the boards above the electrolytic capacitors.
Them boards is where the magic happens. The Dr boards.
