I need advice for a Canada Post Insurance Claim

[phoebescollectables]

After 4 years I have my first insurance claim with Canada Post. The item was shipped expedited to the US and was insured for $200.00 Canadian. On Monday it will be 30 days since it was mailed.

How long does it usually take to get a claim approved?
Will they automatically refund the postage cost as well?

Any tips or suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Michael

[shoplineca]

Michael
First off, dont be surprised if USPS delivers your item within the next week.

Putting that aside, do you have a business account with CP? If you do, you call the general toll free number and when prompted enter your business number.

You will be connected to a customer service rep who will take down the information. They will forward it to the claims dept who will call you in about a week & will ask for the same details again and likely ask you to forward proof of cost (you only get reimbursed what YOU paid for the item plus shipping).

Because it is not unusual for Expedited to take 45 days, you may find that there will be a waiting period, they will run a trace but USPS does not update their tracking until 24 hours after the goods have been delivered and I dont believe that USPS will do a trace before 45 days.

After that, CP is pretty fast at cutting a cheque however. Once approved, the cheque is cut and out within 2 days.

If they are going to wait the 45 days because of USPS, it is important to keep your customer fully informed of the reason for the delays before you can refund him. Dont be shy letting him know that USPS is running a trace and tell them that is a USPS policy or habit and keep communicating with the customer through emails every 3-4 days.

I have filed several CP claims, never for lost goods but for damage and the customers can get upset as you have their money however you dont know your customer and they could eventually receive the goods and your refund of their payment without you getting reimbursed so dont pay out until you get your payment from CP first.

Good luck

Malcolm

[phoebescollectables]

Hi Malcolm,

I don't have any proof of what I paid for the item (they don't give receipts at garage sales), however I do have proof of what it is worth (ebay listing). If they will only reimburse you for what you paid for it then what is the purpose of insuring for the whole value of it?

Michael

[shoplineca]

Michael
I have heard that at best you will get 50% of what you sold the item for if you dont have proof of purchase.

I used to insure for the selling price as well until I was told they will not reimburse your profit so I overpaid CP for at least 8-months on insurance. You dont know until you file a claim.

This is true for most carriers as I have gone down that road with UPS as well. I even tried to recover packaging materials but to no avail.

If 50% of what you sold the item for doesnt cover your costs, have someone hand-write a receipt for what you paid and mark cash (even on a piece of paper).

Just a side note: Since you sometimes buy from garage sales for re-sale, you should really carry a receipt book and get the sellers to give you a receipt in the event you are ever audited by Revenue Canada. It would be disasterous to have them give you a tax bill after disallowing what you claimed was your cost for items without any proof.

Malcolm

[goaliemitch]

We have filed several claims for damaged merchandise, mostly for things that we thought would never break like older steel tools. The claims under $100 were never a problem, but when the item was insured for more it can turn into a struggle to get reimbursed. Canada Post will contact your customer to confirm the details. They will also try to reimburse only for original cost not profit. The lady I dealt with used old Matchbox toys for an example (must have just had a claim) and told me that since they only cost less than a $1 in a store years ago, a seller can not expect Canada Post to pay for their seller's profit if they sell it for a $100 on eBay and it gets lost. She really had this strong-headed opinion that all items on eBay were sold at unrealistically high prices and that sellers better not expect Canada Post to insure these inflated profits.

As mad as I got, I couldn't help but laugh at her ignorance of the collectible market on or off eBay. To finally settle the claim, I provided her with print-outs of eBay auctions that sold considerably higher than the item I sold plus a statement that explained the item we sold ($200 steel post drill) was a family heirloom removed from an old blacksmith building that my parents paid significantly more for when they bought their farm and that I would gladly submit their original purchase agreement and they could decipher what was originally paid for the drill. The full claim was paid along with postage and in a follow up phone call I was told that Canada Post only pays for loss not damage and that policy has been in effect since 9/11 but now they are starting to enforce it.

I told the lady that I found it hard to believe that if my parcel arrived crushed with Canada Post's forklift tire tracks across it that they would not be responsible for the damage, especially if it was insured. She said when it can be proven that Canada Post caused the damage, they would still pay. I don't quite get it. Post office accepts a well packed item that is intact and delivers a shredded box that rattles and it is someone else that caused the damage? They must be taking lessons from FedEx.

[shoplineca]

This all goes back to a thread I statred a year ago: Why do we have to pay for CP's mishandling of our items?

They are retained to provide a service which is delievrying our items within a specified time without damage or loss. Why should we insure that they do their job properly, thats what they are getting paid to do.

Answer: Because they can!!!

Malcolm

[ospreylinks]

Same thing, we have had two claims with Canada Post and after the first learned that no matter what we insured the goods for, they would only reimburse for the wholesale (proven by invoice) value, otherwise they picked a number out of the sky to their benefit.

I had the same discussion with the lady indicating that their postal clerks never advised us that insurance was only payable on the proven wholesale value paid and not the selling price and that for a period of time we had been insuring and not knowing otherwise for the customer invoice value. Therefore, Canada Post owed me a refund for paying too much insurance.... Of course you know where that got me.


In terms of payouts, I have found their service awful. Slow, numerous calls and followups.

Jeff

[auctiondropnship]

See this is were A lawsuit could start

If you go into CP and ship a box . All they ask is "what would you like to insure it for "

No instructions are given reguarding insurance , this is wrong !!! CP I feel does this on purpose , avoiding providing correct info reguarding insurance when you ship. This means they make more money. Insurace with CP is a big scam. It ticks me off to know end

How many of you have house insurance ...If your house burns down. Do you get the cost of the wood and the plaster ..

Now when you ship USPS , they give you your sold cost back
:^O

[goaliemitch]

This thread is going to take a twist now that you mentioned lawsuit and shipping damage in the same post. An opportunity to rant. We bought a 21" monitor through eBay. I begged the seller not to ship FedEx after having nothing but problems with their 3rd party carrier. Seller assured me that I would not have any problems.

FedEx carrier couldn't put it through the door of their plane, had to find a truck to put it on to get to the depot, couldn't fit it into their courier car, so had to wait for a van, eventually it got here and you guessed it, didn't work. Didn't really look damaged. Seller claimed it was damaged in shipping and he would replace it if I returned it via FedEx.

When I told FedEx to return it to the sender because it was damaged in shipping, they wanted to inspect it. It went from Saskatchewan to Alberta and then back to Ontario. When it arrived back to the seller a month later, he refused it and it was returned to me. This time it was in pieces with holes punched through the box and foam insert. My wife refused the shipment, but later in the day when we weren't home, the FedEx contractor dropped it off on the sidewalk and had our neighbor sign for it because he said "you have to."

The nice thing that FedEx did was put little stickers on the box stating: "We regret that some of your items were damaged in transit. . . " We filed a damage claim with FedEx. They denied it and stated that even if they were responsible, any insurance proceeds would have to be paid to the shipper (who was very uncooperative by this time). Filed every complaint with every department that we could over the next 6 months.

Finally, I filed a small claims action against FedEx's local depot. Three weeks later I got a call from a Pittsburgh lawyer offering a full settlement, including my $20 court filing cost. The check hasn't arrived yet and we recently adjourned the court hearing to give them a little longer to send the check. I did ask him not to send it by FedEx so it should have been here by now. If I had an affidavit of service ready at the court hearing, I would have won the case by default since no one from FedEx showed up. That would have been fun watching a default judgment wind it's way through FedEx's bureaucracy.

Point is that the shippers do not want to spend time in small claims court fighting battles that they would not likely win no matter how much fine print is on the waybill or how thick their policy binder is. You break it, you pay. If the small claims court clerk didn't think you had a chance, they wouldn't accept your claim. Something to keep in mind when things don't work out as they should. Next time, I don't think I would wait and use it as a last resort.

[shoplineca]

That right beacuse you are out the eBay listing fees and ending fees, PayPal commissions, packaging materials etc.

Scam scam scam scam. Owing a monopoly is a license to steal.

Malcolm