I totally agree with you guys. Unfortunately UPS is also the defacto standard for shipping any and everything in this country, so that makes it tough.
I used to regularly ship my mountain bike across country and then catch a plane and go riding for the summer. Got a bike box from a shop, tons of padding, basically packed it up better than a manufacturer ships a bike all the way from taiwan. Of course I insured the crap out of it, knowing full well of UPS's capabilities for destruction.
The problem is that the larger the box, naturally the heavier they expect it to be. This is a huge box that weighs only 37lbs, yet they carry it around with a forklift. Well they missed, and put one of the forks through the box, cutting a large section of the frame. Boy was I pissed.
So i got ahold of UPS and my local bike shop (to estimate value) and they inspected it at the shop. Of course they wanted to deny it, i was actually grateful for a very good argument from the guy who owns the bike shop and sees hundreds of bike boxes a week. I would think it impossible to deny me, when a bloody obvious fork-shaped hole it cut smack through the whole box. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/mad.gif.c18f003ab0ef8a0d9c27ca78d77a6392.gif
In the end they footed the bill for my replacement frame, $2400 at that. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif But god the trouble you have to go through to get there...