Well, it took awhile, but I finally found the Hales Transcendence center channel speaker to go with my Trans. Eight towers. In fact, I found one that was unopened in its box. (The previous owner had bought it for a surround system that never materialized.) It arrived today from Michigan via UPS.

When I removed the speaker from its box I discovered that the metal frame of the grill had been severely bent. Evidently, some idiot at UPS dropped the speaker, and it landed hard on a corner of the box thus collapsing the frame a bit. Luckily, the speaker itself escaped unscathed, and it operates perfectly.

It's pretty apparent to me that UPS cannot be counted on to do its job properly. Has anyone else here had a similar situation? Who is the most reliable carrier as far as getting shipments to their destination in one piece? DSL? Fedex?