BEWARE ! POSTAL INSURANCE.

[Howard Hughes]

Whatto All,

I just wanted to issue a word of warning about British Post Office mail/parcel insurance.
I think many people believe that if they sell an item and insure it using The Royal Mail, then if the parcel becomes lost, then the buyer will be able to claim the amount he has paid for said item. This is NOT true.
The seller/sender must make the insurance claim and must produce proof of the cost of the item to him. This is the amount he/the seller can claim from The Royal mail. The buyer CANNOT claim the amount he has paid for the item.
e.g. if I sell a suit on Ebay, and insure it, then if it becomes lost I must make the claim and have to prove the cost of the item to me. If I, the seller, paid £10 for the suit and still had the receipt, then sold it for £200, then I, the seller would have to make/and could only claim the £10 I had originally paid for it.

So, if you are the buyer, do not pay more for postage because the seller offers insurance, it does not become your item until it is delivered to you. The insurance contract is between the sender/seller and The Royal Mail, the buyer has nothing to do with it.

I asked if this was true in the Post office this week and they confirmed it to be correct.
The lady behind the counter even said that her son was currently in a dispute with Post Office over this very issue.

As they say in Rome, always read the small print first, because it usually makes the large print a waste of ink.

Hope this is clear and helpful.

Toodleoo
HH

 

[Eyemo]

Very interesting...I had a "scare" the other day...Makes you wonder

 

[XPLSV]

Postal Insurance is Almost a Scam

My wife had bought a doll a couple of years back. She paid about $250 for it. She figured it to be worth about $800 in it's current condition. One of her "investment" purchases Anyway, the doll arrived damaged--the glass eyes had been knocked loose from the skull. The seller did not do a very good job of packing it, frankly. Well, the seller insured it for only $200, not the $250 my wife had paid. With the US Postal Service, the recipient files a report with the local post office and then the sender will have to provide (to either the sending or receiving post office--I believe it can be either way) the documentation of original mailing and insurance purchase. My wife had an estimate for repairing the eyes of $125 or $150, I think. To me, it would be logical to repair the item and move on. In this case, the moving on being equal to the $800 value of the doll. Well, with the US Postal Service, you have to turn the item over to them and then it has to be substantiated at a given value that can go up to the insured value. So, my wife could have turned it over and tried to get $200 out of the postal service if they would accept the $200 insured value of the doll...or...she could have tried to return the doll to the seller, who did not appear too cooperative...or a combination of trying to get the $200 plus the $50 from the seller who failed to insure for the full value. She ended up with the other option...just keeping the doll and eating the repair costs on her own. I think some eye lashes were replaced and the doll was restrung, also. I'm not sure how much we ended up putting into the doll but it ended up becoming a permanent fixture in her collection and not the "money making" doll of the original purchase. One of those vintage French dolls, I hesitate to spell...Armand Marseille or something.

My other gripe is delivery confirmation. I mailed a book out of Anchorage, Alaska a number of years ago, bound for a town in New Jersey. It was an OFAS sale and went for $10. I think it was an audio book. I decided not to bother insuring it and only used delivery confirmation. It never arrived in New Jersey. I was able to use my delivery confirmation to check online and see it was accepted in Alaska but it never showed another status. I went in to the post office and they told me "interesting." They couldn't do anything. There's no actual tracking with the delivery confirmation, I had no insurance...so I had no options :eusa_doh: I've never bothered with delivery confirmation since. I insure and if someone says they never received an item, they would have to file on the other end with the post office, so that kind of takes care of my "delivery confirmation" need...