I would like to bring up a recent dealing I've had with Italian parts supplier Effebi, and the owner Franco Beretta. Franco can be contacted at fraber@effebisrl.eu

I would first like to say I have been a part of other orders from him that went fine. This last order did not go well and I want to make it known that in my opinion he did not handle it as I would expect.

I recently ordered 50 ribs from Effebi, they shipped them in a few days but unfortunately I took delivery of an empty shipping tube. My assumption is that during delivery the weight of the ribs busted out one end, someone then taped the tube end back up. During transit the tube was also stopped by customs, its possible they opened the tube to view the contents. I know there were ribs in there at one time as I can see imprints from the ribs in the plastic end cap.

Many unsuccessful attempts were made by me with FedEx to make a claim. Franco claims he was able to get refunded for the shipping cost as well as 22euro per kg of good lost. A roughly 250euro refund. I was not made aware of this deal until afterwards, and he did not offer me this money back until many back-and-forths. I declined.

I paid 150 euro for shipping, I was never made aware this didn't include insurance, nor was I offered a chance to pay more for insurance.

I offered to settle the matter by refunding me half the dollar amount for the goods plus all the shipping cost. I figured this was a fair compromise as the issue wasn't caused by either of us yet we both share the burden. He declined.

He has ended communication at this point, I'm left with paying about $1400 and have zero to show for it.

I wanted to make this public so that the few here who might deal with him knows how issues are handled by them. These are the facts of the transaction, one can take them however they wish.

That's bad. I have had bad and good luck with ordering parts from Italy too; seems they do not want to, or don't know how, to pack things securely; I was told that they want to use the lightest possible packing to save on their incredibly expensive postage. So they put items into a thin plastic bag that should go into a stiff cardboard box, and Italian tape is much like Wal Mart brand Scotch tape; useless.
I guess you will have to suck this one up, but I would order a far smaller quantity at a time; spread the potential for loss out. Or just fly over there and get them.

Getting stuff when you can't get your hands around someones neck is always a touch and go sort of thing Aaron. I think if you look around and supply a couple of drawings you could have 50 ribs whacked out of buzzard grade 1018 within 50 miles of your shop on a CNC for $20 to $30 a pop. You're going to have to re-cut the bottoms to fit your jobs so you could probably come up with something a lot closer to the type of guns you produce than bastardizing something designed for something else.

But I feel your pain. I ordered 30, 1/2 inch carbide end mills from an Israeli company and they shipped me HSS. I didn't receive them until long after the return date. I had the signed paperwork from DHL to prove it. But because of their 30 days from shipping return policy they refused to exchange the product for carbide or refund my money. They also flatly refused to refund the difference between carbide and HSS. Their narrow minded mentality was that they were not responsible for it taking DHL 2 months to get it to me. Their policy was 30 days after shipping date on returns and that as they say was that! In the end I got 30, cheap, 1/2 inch HSS end mills worth about $8 each for the $40 price of tit coated, carbide which I had paid them for.

I have never dealt with them or allowed anything to be shipped by DHL again.

Of course Italy's commercial laws may be different from here in the US. But in general, when something is shipped to you, unless it says otherwise, it is shipped fOB the shipping point. That is where the title changes hands. So, if the buyer wants to insure his goods from the shipping point it is up to the buyer to make sure to provide the seller with funds to purchase that insurance for him (or her).

If the law is the same there, you should have insisted that the seller buy insurance for you, and you should have gotten that contract in writing when you submitted the extra money for the shipping costs.

Conversely, when a seller insists on the buyer paying insurance, but the seller ships fob the shipping point, that is a bogus deal because title has already passed and the shipper is using your money to protect himself instead of the buyer.

Given your description of the facts, if you paid for the good and shipping ahead of time, the seller is not entitled to any of the money he recovered. That should all be yours because he did not suffer any loss.

Get a contract in writing before making a big expenditure.