USPS Insurance SNAFU w/ Rio Grande

Good news. The sad fact is that the vast majority of the people in this situation just curse and walk away. It is the ones who politely persist that will finally get paid. I'm glad you stuck it out.

There is a second lesson here,too. Documentation is everything in a claim. If it is valuable enough to mail with insurance, take photos, keep receipts, bill of sale, copies of canceled checks, etc.
 
bladsmth said:
There is a second lesson here,too. Documentation is everything in a claim. If it is valuable enough to mail with insurance, take photos, keep receipts, bill of sale, copies of canceled checks, etc.
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jmsodpc said:
they lost a package of mine and claimed bullion isn't insured unless its registered
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12345678910 said:
From what I've found, you may have to use registered mail to ship silver.
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This is what Rio Grande discovered via this debacle having never had it happen to one of their customer prior to this.
Phil Dwyer said:
The Domestic Mail Manual has the following phrase in the Claims (not Insurance) section:

Except for Registered Mail, the maximum indemnity for negotiable items (defined as instruments that can be converted to cash without resort to forgery), currency, or bullion, is $15.00.

The USPS Claims Department considers metal scrap to be a negotiable item; they are waiving that stipulation due to the theft. Going forward, the only insurance for scrap that USPS will honor is for Registered Mail packages.

Rio Grande has never experienced claims denial prior to the incidence of theft; we were not aware of the regulation stated above until this incident. Our USPS BSN representative was also unaware of that particular stipulation until this incident.
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So, be careful not only about documentation and crossing all your T's and dotting all your I's, make sure about the legitamacy of the shipping methods you use as well. And, it will be unlikely the shipping personnel you are making the transaction with will know what the details of coverage are (or are not).

I'm still not considering this claim closed until I have the check and it is has cleared.

Thank you all for all you support!!!
 
Good luck to you Phil, I'm hoping that check doesn't bounce like a cheap rubber ball!

I have/had inlaws that work in the USPS system. Everything from a Supervisor at a Distribution Center to a rural mail carrier. If you could hear some of the stories they tell, you'd never send anything of value through the USPS!! :eek:

Of course, FedEx and UPS isn't much better, especially since the use the USPS to move a lot of their stuff.
 
How were you able to prove the theft?

Because they already knew of other thefts, they checked the video and found label swapping was recorded ?
 
I had a similar problem with UPS. I had sold an old lawnmower engine on EBAY and I shipped it with UPS because I had shipped large packages with them in the past and they had a store in town. Well, when the motor arrived at the buyer, it had been smashed all to hell and half the crate I had built for it had been ripped away. The buyer refused to accept it, but notified me as soon as he got it and made sure to send me pictures of the crate. Thank god he was nice enough for that and smart enough to recognize that the crate had been destroyed through carelessness. Anyways, it was returned to my house and when I tried to claim the insurrance, it was denied because they claimed it hadn't been shipped without a crate. But they examined it after the crate had been ripped off the base. It took a few months of arguring with the management, but I eventually got my claim approved and a check for the destroyed motor. But it was a nightmare. For one, the "UPS Store" tried to claim that they weren't responsible for the damage since they weren't actually part of the UPS company. WTF! I had to point out to the manager that he had personally accepted the package and responsability for its safe delivery. I had to show him the pictures and the motor and pointed out that the crate had obviously been ripped away. Eventually, he admited that he remembered me and called his branch manager in and things were taken care of. Either that or I just intimidated him by carrying in a 120 lb motor into his store in my arms unassisted?

The point is, you need to force the issue if you want a company to take responsibility.

It just seems that all people want to do these days is point fingers and not fix the f*&^*# problem.
 
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