If anyone? They are jerking me around and I can’t seem to find anything relevant on Google. If it helps I am in California. I did call the California Department of Insurance and they said they don’t have jurisdiction because UPS is not an agent or insurance carrier.
Maybe this agency has some power over them , it does not hurt to check.
FWIW, my experience with UPS is that they will gladly take your money and sell you insurance, but if they destroy your item in shipping, they will claim that it was “inadequately packed”, and refuse to pay up.
I checked their website and I see nothing that leads me to believe they have any jurisdiction. There’s no form to file a complaint and searching their site for “file a complaint” comes up with nothing useful.
Their pickup receipt, signed by their driver, says he ensured the shipment was properly packaged, but as it seems would be expected they are trying to claim improper packaging (without even having inspected it yet, no less)
The UPS Terms and Conditions, sometimes referred to as Conditions of Contract, are pretty much the same as all carriers. What a customer pays and/or is quoted has noting to do with the value of what is being transported. Consequently, a carrier’s Limits of Liability are minimal. However, when the government permitted carriers to operate with these Limits of Liability, it required carriers to offer customers a product to increase the basis limits. Most frequently, this product is Excess Valuation, sometimes referred to as Declared Value coverage. This is NOT insurance, however. Lots of fine print.
Try Small Claims Court.
ianal
If you post/describe your claim/problem I may be able to assist.
Yeah, details would help.
In short, if you declared additional value directly to UPS (UPS Stores and other UPS retailers are free to sell you 3rd party insurance), they should reimburse you for whatever amount you declared for your parcel + shipping charges + packaging costs.
They will fight back, of course. They will accept whatever you said when shipping, but once it breaks and you ask for that money back, they will want a lot more info about what was being sent and how.
You will have to show some proof of the value of the item (sales receipts). It has to be a fair market value. No collector value or anything of the sort.
They will want to know if the damage is repairable and offer to repair it if it is cheaper, even if a repair is not something you will be happy with.
There is also the matter of appropriate packaging. That the driver checked appropriate packaging does not mean that it will be considered appropriate packaging when push comes to shove. All it means is that the outer box was in good shape, was well taped and didn’t make rattling sounds. If you were shipping a crystal egg with no packaging, then it will be inappropriate packaging and you are screwed.
You can get that money if you fight them right but there are no warranties and you should not expect any outside assistance from any other agency.
May I piggyback a hypothetical? UPS, despite calls to their customer service department, occasionally leaves packages in front of our garage. This isn’t normally a problem; if we’re expecting something and it isn’t by the front door we go out and look there. Leaving it in front of the garage would make sense if we worked outside the house, but we (Mrs. Dvl and I) work out of our home office.
If one of these days an unexpected package arrives or I forget to check after opening the garage – and something gets squooshed, would I have any recourse against UPS (assume the shipper disclaims responsibility)?
You are probably better off burying the squoosded box in your backyard and saying you didn’t get it. Lost packages are a much easier claim than damaged packages.
Thanks all for your help and advice. In a shocking turn of events, UPS has decided to go ahead and honor the claim with (almost) no questions asked.
First, I do want to echo SanDiegoTim’s point that UPS does not sell insurance. I decided I should read the tariff to get a better understanding of their position, and right there – clear as day – they say it’s specifically not insurance. How it’s not insurance is beyond me, and perhaps a good thread for GD-- though, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
As for my situation, here goes:
I shipped a piece of two-way radio equipment to a customer in Ohio, to be installed in their fire station. The cabinet the radio was in had a massive dent on the top, so bad that one of the cabinet doors could not be removed without punching it out from the inside. No evidence of this was apparent from the outside packaging. The chief called me when he opened the box, I filed a claim online, UPS’ response was that an inspection was scheduled. FWIW, the cabinet was bolted to a pallet with 4 1/2" bolts, and the box covering the entire cabinet was 3/8"-thick cardboard with foam padding inside and was securely stapled to the pallet with staples every 3-4 inches. (The first time UPS carried this to me, from Illinois to California, they managed to ship it with no damage or problems…)
They then proceeded to come pick up the merchandise (at no time did they say they needed to pick it up, just inspect it, had I known it needed to be picked up I would have told them then and there it was a no-go as the radio had already been installed and put into service)
So they say they will call me in 24 hours to arrange an on-site inspection. Two days later I have no call, I call them, call center says they have to forward the matter to the claims department, and I’d have a call within 24 hours. 2 days goes by again, still no call. I call again, say hey, what the hell is going on here? Lots and lots of apologies from UPS ensue, and I am told I’ll have a call within 1 hour. Next day I call them AGAIN, and tell them they can take their insurance claim and shove it up their ass, I am taking my business to FedEx for awhile. The supervisor takes the info, says she can’t commit to time frame, but that I will definitely get a call (this is about 4PM in the afternoon)
Magically I have 3 calls from the claims department the next damn morning, the last one saying they will honor the claim and all I have to do is provide documentation on the item’s value (invoice and catalog sheet) and that’s there is to it…
Frankly I think it was the whole FedEx thing that got them moving, I do about $500 a week in UPS shipping and judging from their past quarter’s results they need every dollar of revenue they can get.
All is well that ends well. Your last line is what made the difference. A regular customer who never makes a claim threatens to take his business elsewhere and all the sudden everyone springs into action.
I forget the exact name, but you should have an account agent or something to that effect. That is a person who you call for customer service instead of dealing with a random 1-800 phone answerer du jour. He will be the kind of person who knows you and your shipping patterns and can really grease the gears when something goes wrong.
I have noticed in the past that you don’t get results with just a complaint. You have to pair that with a threat of taking your business elsewhere. A simple complaint is mostly ignored without the threat.
Update
Got the settlement check today.
The payee???
UPS/UPS Capital Insurance Agency
If it’s not insurance, why is an insurance agency paying out the claim?
Presumably because *they *are insured by their insurance carrier, versus them insuring you.
Insurance is intended to protect the sender not the receiver. If your goods arrived damaged you contact the sender and get your money back from him. The sender than has to file the claims to get reimbursed. That is how it’s set up.
A lot of senders try to dodge this obligation. That is why I only use credit cards to get merchandise, 'cause you have a recourse in a dispute.
I suppose this wasn’t clear, but I am the sender of the package. Hence I received the settlement check.
Also, putting a shipment like this on the credit card would do no good. Credit cards don’t insure the shipment. At best I would get the shipping charges back. The protections would do me no good on the $5000 in damaged merchandise.
It appears this would be a fine presumption to make.
I once got a letter from UPS telling me they destroyed a bunch of my stuff, but they weren`t going to honor my insurance claim because they deemed it was insufficiently packed.
A few days later they finally returned the boxes to me. They were still slightly damp and the interior boxes, interleaving, and dunnage were all stuck together from obvious water damage. Apparently with UPS, I need to package my shipments with a Kramerica Industries brand bladder system to protect it from UPS dropping my stuff in puddles or it’s not insured.