Originally Posted by
diy speaker guy 
I've been thinking how to respond to this for the last couple of days. I'm going to mark myself down as "Other" in the poll since this is something that I could do but I have a lot of reservations. I'll bring up a few here but there's a lot of stuff to talk about before accepting pallets.
On the one hand, I live in southwestern Ontario near London. I'm about 5 minutes away from highway 401 and about 10 minutes away from the post office, which would presumably make for fast shipping. I've got full access to at least a couple of full size pickup trucks and at least one member of my family drives right by the post office at least once a day. So in these respects I am qualified for the job.
On the other hand I'm really hoping someone else decides to handle this since it's a huge potential ball of trouble. If I were to consider this responsibility, a lot of the following issues would need to be discussed.
TAXES
I don't even know what's involved here (which duty and sales taxes are applicable, how Erich handles this, etc), but I would need to be convinced that I would not be responsible in any way for any unpaid sales taxes or duties. Since I'm in Canada and the last one to handle the goods so if there was any problem the authorities would likely find it easiest to hassle me. This is a major point for me, if anyone could point me to the appropriate information on learning about the legal aspects and implications of this I would appreciate it.
PALLET CONTENT AND SHIPPING DETAILS
Where is it coming from? If it comes direct from manufacturer it will need to be packaged. I'm not excited about sourcing and buying packing materials but it's not out of the question. Material costs and possibly a small but fair handling charge would have to be compensated.
what type of insurance is required for loss or damage? If my house burns down for example, I don't want to shoulder the additional burden of stuff that isn't even mine. In minor cases, how would loss or damage be handled? For example, what happens if a waveguide is scratched when I receive it, or if I scratched one? Erich absorbs a lot of this type of cost, I can't.
How much stuff fits on a pallet? How long would I have this stuff? If Erich sends a bunch of random stuff from his stock, some items might not sell for a long time. It would probably be best if all the content was already bought and paid for, like a group buy type of thing.
It would be best if Erich handles all the money stuff but I'm not sure how that would work. Can Erich order the shipping labels online and send them to me to print out? If the packages have to be weighed at the post office, I'd have to drive them in, weigh them, bring them back home, email Erich the package details, wait for him to order the shipping labels, print them out and stick em on the boxes and drive back to the post office to drop the packages off. This could get irritating. Is there a better way to do this?
How much are we going to save?
If it comes direct from the manufacturer we could save a great deal. But if it comes from Erich, shipping has to be paid three times before it gets to the end user. Size and weight also factors in here, it might not be worth for large and heavy items like flat packs. If we aren't going to save a bunch of money this isn't worth it.
COMMUNICATION
This is a big one, probably should have been first on the list. Taking on a responsibility like this would make me extremely nervous and I would need direct and guaranteed contact with Erich. So far, I'd call my previous communcations with Erich abysmal at best. The first time I emailed it took a week to get a response. The second time, he answered fairly quickly but then did not respond at all to a follow up email, so the opportunity to make a sale was lost. To be clear, this doesn't bother me as a casual customer, I know he's busy and it wasn't completely unexpected, but as someone involved in receiving a pallet group buy I'd want a priority email address and probably a telephone number.
(Erich, just to let you know who I am, I'm the guy that emailed you "VERY RARE OPPORTUNITY" or something like that, I had family visiting in Minnesota recently that could have brought the stuff back duty free and saved me over $100. You asked what items I wanted to make sure you had them in stock. I replied to the email - I did not use the website contact form this time - and I did not get any reply. I don't know if you didn't get my reply email, or if you thought I was a scammer, or maybe you just missed my message or were too busy... I'm not upset, just letting you know who I am.)
So I'm really hoping someone else will do this but at least this opens up the conversation. There's a lot of details to consider before accepting pallets. I brought up a few of them but there's lots more to consider as well.
So I just sent the order into the company and had them bill the customer, customer pays manufacturer. I'm just helping figure the best way to ship. And no, I did not make one penny on that, or the shipping. They went directly with the manufacturer, which saved having the stuff first shipped to me, then me buying packing material, and paying to have it shipped out again.
It's been boxed up the whole time. Not sure if you had changed your mind when shipping wasn't working out for you or not. I remembered it when I went through all the left over JBL gear about a month ago. Then again, it's been a while and my brain has been on overload, so maybe I'm thinking of someone else. 
