This would be my guess. The empegs I recieved from Sonic Blue sometimes had hardly any foam peanuts and the empeg player boxes were pretty loose in the huge boxes that they were using for shipping. The box was pretty much a oval tube with no square corners when I picked it up off of the porch. I sold the players in this box...

The second box I received from SB even had the taping busted loose and a tuner module was missing from the box but at least the box was not round.

The only empegs I received that were in a intact box were the FexEx overnight packages. This is how I got my 60gb and 30gb players.

BTW, I had to send my 60bgb player off to Cambridge yesterday and I saw the lady behind the counter at FedEx pretty much toss the empeg in the corner with the other boxes. Imagine what they do when you are NOT there... I thought I would mention something but I figured that she would go "postal"...