The instructions are not great, but you can generally figure things out. The packing was mediocre with the parts all rattling around in the box, but none seem damaged.The assembly issues come from the amount of things to piece together and the fact that the center stainless steel dividers were not drilled with the correct hole size -- so you'll need a nice titanium bit to correct that. And of course a drill for fixing that and for all the self-tapping screws for the sides of the composter. Speaking of those screws, they worked about 70% of the time -- the other 30%, the cutter would cut the hole, but the screw would then spin but not sink. I replaced some with different self-tapping screws I had around and they worked much better.As for the composter, it spins nicely and seems reasonably tight (because of all the adjustment latches). The tumbler is stainless steel, but the frame is not -- I suspect it may become a rust problem, but time will tell.