I agree that the damage to your crate and robot is unacceptable. I would like to take a moment, however, to stress my appreciation not only for the free shipping that FedEx donates, but also the extra assistance they have given me with regards to crossing the border. No, it's not that hard, but I always seem to need a little bit of help from the shipping and brokerage companies and it is always there.
As we have competed at both Portland and Toronto the past two years, we're probably pretty high up there in the "robot miles logged" category, and I have been very, very pleased with the service we have received. In fact this year, a piece of coroplast (about 2 sq ft) that was forgotten lying on the top of our crate on ship day, not only made it to Portland, then to Toronto, but also back to Vancouver.
In fact, the one time we did have damage to our crate (last year) it was because we didn't build it well enough.
Yes, shipping problems happen (ask team #4!) and need to be dealt with, but with over 1,000 teams and 30 events, perhaps we should recognize them for the rare occurance that they are.
I haven't searched to see if there is a white paper on crate building. We all assume, I think, that it is a simple thing, but certainly having examples of how to build durable, reasonably lightweight crates might be a big help to rookie teams who probably havent really even thought of a crate until the week before ship!
Jason
P.S. When not using the donated FedEx shipping (FedEx freight won't go East-West within Canada for some strange reason) we have had excellent service from Vince at
http://www.arrowtranz.com/ It was $350 to get our 400 lb+ crate back to Vancouver from Toronto. It took about a week. He also got us across the border to Portland with no problems, too... took about two days and $250.