<sigh> so I'm going to accept the player with the crashes HDD. Looks like escrow was 100% worthless. Any seller could ship you a broken item and when you get it and want to reject it, they could refuse to take it back. Simply claim that it was broken in the mail and that it's not "in the original condition as when they shipped it."

I have no idea when the hard drive on my new player got broken, but if it WAS during shipping, then there's no way I can go through with the UPS insurance claim. UPS wants to inspect the contents of the box at their place. There's no way I'm letting anyone open this box but me, the seller, and the Cambridge team.

Then the insurance claim is between UPS and the 3rd party place that shipped it. Yeah, looks fine, but the fragile read head is probably floating around inside the drive. Who can tell!

So, rather than have the unit go out of my control and into the hands of who knows who, I'll be sending it back to its home. Maybe I got suckered by buying a dead unit, maybe UPS botched it (I still blame UPS because I trust the seller). I don't know but I DID get a good price and the warranty service is free. I guess I made out ok in the end. Thanks for all your help everyone.