Beyond Oblivion

Trivium's Matt Heafy was in for a rude shock when his touring Epiphone LP came in with a broken headstock. How? Fedex. 

How's Fedex taking it? Total denial of this mishap & Mr. Heafy's claim was rejected. That's adding salt to a deep wound right there. Are we surprised at all with such a tragedy? Not really because we know how airlines, airports & shipping agencies are oblivious to the fact that musical instruments are fragile. The real mystery here is that of accountability- nobody wants to own up. 

If you've ever bought a guitar online, chances are, Fedex might be the responsible party bringing it right to your doorsteps. We depend on companies like Fedex because they have a reputation of doing it right. Maybe not for musical instruments in particular. I wonder how entirely different it would be handling guitars in their rugged hard cases across oceans as opposed to something else which is equally fragile & similarly bundled. If people out there are working on the assumption that everything should be handled one way since this works for everything, they might need to re-think this approach. The tank-grade enclosure might survive the harsh terrain but what's inside it might not. Blame the case for not doing its job, no? But I'd say blame the hands for being untrustworthy as well; we did not simply tasked you to get it done but we trusted you to do it right. At the end of it all, you showed us that you could not be trusted with such assignments so why should you not be blamed for it?