I've started asking sellers to dismantle the bike as much as they can, and to ship in two boxes - one for the frame and some of the smaller parts (all well wrapped and padded), and the other for the wheels and the rest of the parts. Shipping in two boxes doesn't cost significantly more than one, at least when shipping from the US to Canada (by USPS, the safest and cheapest method in my experience).
Bike shops generally don't seem to do a very good job of packing. People assume that because bike shops know bikes, and unpack a lot of bikes, that they know how to pack a bike, but in my experience they don't. Plus they don't seem to really care, and this is the last thing you need in an ebay transaction - involving another party who doesn't really care how the transaction turns out and who is difficult to recover damages from if they screw up. They will just blame it on the carrier and tell the sender to make an insurance claim.
If the seller doesn't have the tools to dismantle the bike, I would ask them to have a bike shop take the parts off (at my cost), but would always prefer the seller to pack the bike. They will generally try not to screw up because they don't want the negative feedback and the hassle.
Brian Samson Vancouver, BC, Canada
On 8-Oct-08, at 9:31 PM, Jose Villaluz wrote:
> I contacted a bicycle shop that claimed to
> be able to do the job (wrong, wrong, wrong).