What Happens If Mirrors Arrive Broken? Breakage Rate, Spares and Claims

Short answer: a free spare-parts kit ships with every order to cover it, claims are made within 7 days of arrival, and our measured breakage rate is under 1% on standard flat products. Mirrors do break in transit. The question worth asking a supplier is not whether it happens but what has been engineered so that it does not stop your job.

The number, and why we publish it

Under 1% on standard flat products; under 1.5% on the larger and more fragile formats such as floor and dressing mirrors. Those are measured figures, not a promise.

A supplier claiming zero damage on mirror glass is not measuring. Glass in a container moves, containers get dropped, and a forklift tine finds a pallet corner sooner or later. A zero-damage claim tells you the supplier either has no data or is not counting the ones the customer quietly threw away.

The three things that decide whether breakage hurts you

1. Packaging tested to a standard, not just "well packed"

Our cartons are packed to the ISTA 3A profile — a transit simulation covering drop, vibration and compression for parcel-delivered goods. "Heavy-duty packaging" is a sentence anyone can write. A standard name is a thing you can look up and hold a supplier to.

2. A spare-parts kit that ships with the order, not after the claim

Every order includes a 3% free spare-parts kit. The reason it ships up front rather than on request is timing: if a hotel is fitting out on a fixed opening date, a replacement that arrives six weeks later is worthless. The spares are already on site when the crate is opened.

For project work with a hard install date we build a small over-order into the quotation openly, rather than letting a shortfall be discovered on site.

3. A claim window you can actually meet

Claims within 7 days of arrival for physical damage, and 30 days for electrical dead-on-arrival on LED models. Photograph the crate before it is opened and the damage before anything is moved — that pair of photographs settles almost every claim without argument.

What we need from you to settle a claim

• Photographs of the outer packaging as received, before opening
• Photographs of the damaged item in place, before it is moved
• The carton or pallet number, which is printed on the packing list
• How many pieces are affected and whether the spare-parts kit covered it

With those four, a replacement decision does not need a discussion. Without the first two, it usually does.

Common questions

Who is liable once the goods leave the factory?

That follows the Incoterm on the order — EXW, FOB, CFR, CIF or DDP each place the risk transfer at a different point. Whatever the term says, we treat a breakage report as a supply problem first and an insurance question second, because a distributor with a broken shelf does not care where risk transferred.

Does the spare-parts kit cover custom sizes?

Yes. On custom or single-model orders the 3% is calculated on the order and rounded up to a whole piece, so a 20-piece custom run ships with one spare rather than none.

Why do mirrors break more than plain glass?

The silvering and backing add stiffness but no impact strength, and a mirror cannot be toughened after silvering — the furnace temperature destroys the coating. Any mirror sold as toughened was toughened as clear glass first and silvered afterwards, which limits the sizes and edge treatments available. That constraint is why packaging does the work that toughening cannot.