Post Office Policy

I shipped an attachment to a guy in California by USPS,insured for $300, box arrived broken and parts missing.Replacement parts not available. Will the post office pay insurance?
Bob

If you had it insured, they will.

Jackal

They may. Recently retired Postmaster here. For an item valued at $300.00 dollars the decision to pay or not to pay will not be left up to the Postmaster at the orginating office or the receiving office. All documentaion that you and the addressee provide will be forwarded to a claims office where they will look at things like how well packed the item was, any damage to the box, was the box rated for the weight and bulkiness of the item etc. Just insuring the item does not guarantee payment in the event of damage. It will help your case if the box had visible damage that was noted on delivery. Make sure whoever you shipped the item to keeps the box and all packaging. You will need proof of value, they will pay only actual value for an item not the dollar amount you insured it for. You will need the blue insured reciept you got when you mailed the item. You will present the documentation you have, (keep copies) the reciever will present the item and the packaging he has and a decision is made. IMHO the Post Office does a very poor job of explaining the insuring claim process to customers. During the first few years of ebay there was a lot of people selling and insuring items already broken or damaged and then then filing insurance claims.The result was a tighting of the almost automatic claims payments that were made in the past. I would encourage any one who routingly ships insured packages to go to USPS.com and read up on the insurance policy and claim procedure.

Greg,

Excellent explanation. Thank you

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Barry Milton

I just noticed you are in Canada and this is an international shipment. This will change some of what I wrote in my earlier post as I posted it thinking it was a shipment between 2 United States Post Offices. I will leave my earlier post as it may help someone shipping domestic packages. My biggest nightmare as A US Postmaster was in getting my customers packages addressed to Canada past Canadian Customs. They would literally refuse a package if certain letters in the address or the customs forms were not capitaized, refuse the package if anything on the label or customs forms was not on the correct line or slightly out of a specified place or not in a very specific order. I had a package returned one time ,the sender had a very long last name, when he printed his name it ran slightly out of the space allowed on the customs form to enter the name, Canadian Customs returned the package because of this. It got to the point there was sort of a feud between Postmasters on our side and Canadian customs. This was as recent as 2004 when I retired. I am relating this just to let you know there may still be problems between US and Canadian officals on shipping packages between the two countries. I hope all the issues have been resolved. I don't know for sure what the procedures for filing on an international shipment will be, my advice would be to check with Canadian Post.

Thanks for the excellent info. Actually, it was shipped from Plentywood, Mt. , went parcel post which was probably my first mistake should have sent it Priority.
Bob

I went through a two month run-around with the USPO over a Wilton vise they lost. They admitted they lost it, but the insurance turned out to be worth zip. They won't accept e-mail as a valid form of documentation (guess the PO doesn't like email), always had another form they wanted filled out, documentaion was never acceptable, blah blah blah. All this over a $75 claim.

Became obvious I was being "bureaucratted" to death, and I gave up, which was surely their goal. Wasn't worth the time; I refunded the customer personally to protect my reputation, and promptly made it a point to avoid them at all cost in the future. Will NEVER ship anything in a box through them again, and set up all my bills on the computer that I had been paying through the mail.

So, in my opinion, postal insurance is worthless. YMMV, I hope so.

Greglea, thanks for taking the time with your explanations. Please don't take the above statements as a personal attack or flaming your previous posts. This is simply my viewpoint on the matter, and my experience with the topic at hand. I wish this on nobody; maybe others have better luck.

Rob