Original packing may not always be a guaranteed for safe delivery.
I bought a pair of speaker (130 lb each) from an original owner. (It is not Salk brand.) It is shipped with the original box, but had suffered damages on the corners on both speakers. It could have only happened if the speaker was dropped from 1 feet or above.
The speaker was fully insured, and UPS picked them up for inspection, but denied the insurance claim due to inadequte packaging even with original packing material and boxes. I did not further go against UPS but rather let the maker of the speaker repair the damage. I was lucky that the maker fixed them for free.
No no no. This is UPS standard response: deny anything over $100.
Trust me. When my parent's business was still open, I worked for them in college. We would have UPS break any and every thing they could. If it was under $100, always credited our account. If over 100, always denied it. Reason was ALWAYS because of inadequate packaging. Things that were denied by UPS:
A box with a clear hole through it from a fork lift or skid. Denied, inadequate packaging. I told the woman on the line how much it would have been to ship it in a iron crate, as that was the only thing that would prevent a fork lift / skid from putting a hole half way through a 24 x 24 x 24 box. They refused to ever credit us. This was for a collection of 4 matching collectible Santa's that together totaled over $400.
A box that was denied for inadequate packaging 45 minutes AFTER we filed the claim. Claim stated it was inspected and was deemed inadequate packaging. I called the customer personally and she informed me not only was the package still in her foyer, but no one from UPS had stopped by to look at it. When I called UPS, the woman on the other line insisted it had been inspected. I pointed out the time line of 45 minutes and she did not say another word besides 'i have credited your account for the value of the shipment.'
What we would do was have a running total of how much money they refused to refund for damaged shipments, and we never paid it in our monthly billing cycles. When they would call us for the money(it ended up being well over $5 grand by the time my parents business closed), we would tell them to take us to court. They would always just say OK and continue to let us to ship with them and NEVER close our account for past due payments.
Most of the damage is caused by shock damage, which leaves little to no visible damage to the box. inside the box, the contents have been jammed so hard(typically from a decently high drop from one conveyor belt to another), that the contents inside the box have broke. There is a company that sells a shock sensors for boxes that will 'burst' if there is a shock of X G force to the package. If you have those, you can easily prove the UPS caused the damage and they can not refute it.