Continuing the story. A couple days ago I randomly received a UPS Freight shipping label from Grizzly via email with nothing more describing what it was for. I was going to call them but had been pretty busy the last couple days and instead received a call from the CSR Robert that has been handling this case. He asked me if I had received the shipping label, I told him I did but had no idea what it was for. He explained to me that they issued it since they now want to bring my sander back and inspect it. That was all he said they wrote in the notes.
I was driving so I didnt think to ask: wait I thought we had decided we were waiting for a new one to come in or at least replacement parts. And then there was the issue with crating it and they were going to consider cross shipping me a new one so I could use the crating material to send back the old one. Guess that all went out the window and now they say that since its a "woodworking" machine it doesnt need to be that precise and they cant tell how out of square it is from my pictures so they want to inspect it in person now.
So now I guess Im forced to rent a cherry picker to lift this machine back onto a pallet I have to find from somewhere and then go buy boards to build a crate around it to have it shipped back. I almost convinced they are just going to send me the same unit back "repaired" or "checked to be perfect" like the replacement non-flat cast iron table they sent me. I have half a mind to just tell them to keep it and issue me a refund once they get it back, but then Im back to square one with figuring out what sander to get.
Sigh... Only big tool I've ever had any issues with and it happened to be the first and only Grizzly product I tried.