Hey Jim, I feel your pain mate.
I had an unfortunate similar experience some years back when I purchased a GT Special from a dude in North QLD. The rod only needed to be transported from Mackay to Bris, but somehow in that distance, the package was obviously run over by an Australia Post truck, and when I extracted the rod from it's (bent and distorted) PVC tube package, I found the rod was about 6-piece instead of 2-piece!
Fortunately I'd made sure I opened the package in full view of the Australia Post staff while at the post office, so they could verify that something was not right. I even got them to sign the complaint form there and then. So while the item was covered for it's purchase value, actually getting the money from Australia Post was similar to extracting a 50kg GT on 2kg baitcast tackle. The correspondence and phone calls went back and forward for ages until eventually, some 4 months later, they sent me a cheque for the purchase amount. Never again! However, the take-home message I think is to make sure you insure any expensive item.
Since then, I've been lucky to only take delivery of rods in person (from good members of this forum actually).
Cheers
Angus
