You’ve never had a shipment lost, or do they always scan on pickup?
We usually don’t have the packages scanned on pickup so occasionally one will go missing with no tracking.
People typically overinsure on things that they may not really need coverage on.
Like I just dropped collision//comprehensive coverage from my car insurance policy. My car’s old now and is worth maybe 10 - 15K at most (and if you file a claim they’ll find a way to adjust the value down anyway). If I take a total loss on that I can just eat it, so what am I paying premiums for? Car liability insurance is mandatory so you have to have that, but collision/comprehensive is usually a waste of money if you can afford to replace the vehicle yourself.
Something where you DO want insurance on for example, is D&O insurance on your business. If something happens with your business, bankruptcy doesn’t necessarily let you, the CEO, walk away and ignore it. You could be facing lawsuits against you personally that will drag on for years and cost hundreds of thousands in legal fees to defend even if they have little merit. If you’ve sold thousands of units of a product, and it ends up causing some kind of serious liability, that $1-2 million aggregate that is standard on general liability policies can get blown through pretty easily, at which point you need D&O insurance (which IMO is the most important part of the policy) to cover any lawsuits you face personally.
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Claims processing issues further devalue the value of insurance.
USPS appears to be paying more claims than they used to because they have automated filing and processing and eliminated the role of the local PO.
UPS has always applied different standards to different shippers. Shippers with daily pickup usually get reimbursed close to 100% of the time, others vary.
I self-insure with rare exceptions, and often those exceptions are based on higher value and the fact that the carriers will often be more conservative with high value items.
I too have enough margin, like @Image to absorb the limited number of losses, and often do not even file claims on inexpensive items when there is insurance included in the shipping.
I also spend money on what I feel is the proper packing material for most items I sell. And reconsider my packaging and test other methods when the annual rate increases appear. I would rather spend more on better packaging than pay for insurance.
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If you got shoddy packaging, insurance will deny your damage claim as well as they’ll say it’s your own fault.
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Better packaging sometimes also sales money on the cost of shipping. Over the past several years we have found were can keep the weight of many shipments down by one step.
Shoddy packaging is done by self-destructive sellers, who do not care about quality, and usually shoot themselves in the foot because of their stupidity and arrogance.
My concern is how to pack faster, and cheaper without increasing damage and customer dissatisfaction. Packing is not a rewarding use of my time. It is a necessary chore. Filing insurance claims is also not gratifying.
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Yeah, having shoddy packaging doesn’t help your brand/store. It says a lot about a business when they’re packaging their products as if it’s a piece of trash.
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Never lost from the cart to the truck. Nearly all of our UPS drivers scan each unit when they put it on the truck now. We are generous annual UPS/USPS tippers and have a “Carrier Snack Fridge” for UPS/USPS and all LTL/container carrier drivers.
We have gone as far as to make ribs for our USPS route letter carrier before he retired. The UPS guy is also friends with the warehouse manager as their kids go to the same school, and play same sports etc.
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Thanks for bringing back a memory. We were working in our home with a Special Exception from the town. One morning I was baking homemade croissants.
The UPS delivery pulled in while I was pulling them out of the oven. I gave him a basket full. Best morning ever, according to him.
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Same for us. I make sure that our UPS driver is well taken care of every time he picks up from us, and all packages are scanned right before being loaded on the truck. Out of thousands of shipments, we’ve only had a handful with discrepancies that weren’t reimbursed - mostly those with the “Investigation competed - shipment contents counted and confirmed” nonsense.
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7 posts were split to a new topic: U-PIC shipping insurance claims for Amazon orders