Without question (to me, anyway), the seller needs to make good, but it always helps if the buyer is understanding and flexible. I have only received one piece of non-working gear, and the seller wasn't particularly helpful, though I didn't push it much with him. I thought I was told sometime during figuring out how to deal with it that if a claim against the shipper is to be made, it has to be made by the person shipping the unit, not the reciever. Don't know if that's true or not. In my case, it was a Krell CD player which, although it seemed to go through all the proper motions, wouldn't read / play the CD. I contacted Krell who told me the unit was under warranty, and I shipped them the unit. Two weeks later, it was returned, not only completely functional, but totally cleaned up - it was beautiful. So, in my case, for $50 extra everything worked out great. My understanding is that Krell no longer honors transferred warranties, so it would have probably been $150 (or more) if it happened today.
In any case, if you really want the piece, I'd investigate the cost to get it fixed and work with the seller on making that palatable to everyone and pursue the claim against UPS as a second resort. -Kirk