I have received an impassioned defense by the seller in this case and I will see how it pans out. In the meantime, I have removed other ads he has placed in my Classifieds.
Part of the problem appears to having sent the bicycle via Postal Service and having no tracking or substantiation of it en route.
This raises our frequent discussions of the various shipping methods, and the flaws in each! FWIW, I still receive about 100 fancy new frames into CDO each season via UPS and no problems when professionally packed.
Dale Brown <A HREF="http://www.classicrendezvous.com/main.htm">Classic Rendezvous</A>