Lost coin in the mail

Ship whatever you want in the mail, but stick to registered and insured mail. Never do that black or blue label insurance for higher value items. They are not signed for by the postal people handling them, and no one is accountable for them. Registereds on the other hand, any mishandling there is cause for an immediate termination. But my postal clerk friends advise me this is only for USA registereds, and not foreign registereds which have no importance or signature trace on them as of very recently.

 

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I bought a custom made fishing rod from a Wisconsin craftsman a cpl years ago.

It was a 7' Walleye rod, St Croix if you care to look, are very top end rods. The USPS driver shut it in the door of the postal jeep. I almost went postal when i received the broken tube with the broken rod. It was not insured or protected in any way. Lucky me, my buddy built the rod and replaced it, he has since learned to ship in PVC tubes.

Like Harry says, save all packaging, take pictures and document everything.

 

thanks for sharing this HarryJ...
so far so good for me on bubble wrap mails and hopefully i'd be able to avoid something like this from happening... hand carry? personal delivery? i wish

 

People of CT the guy above is a professional and has received training please do not attempt this on yourself. it can have disastrous consequences.

 

insurance, refistered, delivery, signature all are a waste of money. what??? how?? for the secrets join spocks how to save a fortune in mailing costs class

 

Where that fortune you save on shipping on the shipping costs will be spent on that class, right?

Phoenix

 

who wants bird soup tonight?

 

i forgot to mention the bird soup is on the house and we are serving a fairytale variety today

 

I use boxes for everthing and send UPS. I always put a sign on the box saying plastic toys, handle with care. Been doing this for many, many years. Never had a problem of any kind. All packages come out perfect.
Handlers, drivers, etc. seam to be carefull if they think the box contains something for a kid. And they all know plastic toys are only worth pennies except to a kid.

 

^cool strategy

 

1. A receipt for the item and a copy of a credit card statement if purchased online. If no receipt is available or the item is unavailable, an appraisal and or photo with some type of proof of the items value is required. One cannot insure an item worth a dollar and expect to receive $1000 just because you insured it for that much.

Read more: http://www.cointalk.com/t42929/#ixzz22AUq58RE

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I strongly disagree with this policy. They should not accept a premium if they are not willing to pay a claim if the item is lost. Value is in the eye of the beholder many times and sentiment is often far more valuable to the sender or receiver than it's book value. I consider this practice Fraud on the part of the Postal Service.
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It's a common sense policy. They are not asking you to prove upfront what an item is worth prior to shipping, but only to give evidence of its worth upon filing a claim. If you required the PO to pay out $1,000 for a one dollar item, as long as you paid the insurance premium for the $1,000 level, then you would need to prove the value of everything prior to packaging and shipping. Do you want to provide appraisals and receipts to the PO and then package all your coins at the PO after they have been inspected?

 

Sentiment has no monetary value.

 

Wow, talk about an old thread.

Why? They charge the insurance fee based on your valuation, why not use your valuation should they fail to deliver it?

I wholeheartedly disagree with their policy of only paying the amount shown on a receipt or the value as determined by an appraiser. Sentimental value exists and is completely legitimate. If a person is willing to fork over the extra money for $1000 of insurance for a painting their great-great-great-grandfather made, even though it would only fetch $10 at an auction, then so be it. They might be the only person in the world for whom that painting is worth $1000, but it is worth that to them nonetheless.

Or, here's another example. Let's say you kept a journal of your travels around the world for a couple years when you were in the Merchant Marines. How would one calculate the value of this journal? What is the value to you? What would the USPS say the value is? You could say it took you 1000 hours to write all the entries. At $20 an hour, that would be $20,000. Maybe you wanted to write an autobiography someday and without that journal, it wouldn't be accurate.

I say it's none of the USPS's business. If you insure it for $20,000 and they accept it, they are responsible for it until it reaches its destination. Seeing as they accepted the payment for $20,000 worth of insurance, they should fork over $20,000 if they lose it.

I know they do this to deter fraud, but I bet it affects legitimate victims of loss more than anyone else... :rollling:

 

I've heard this before and I disagree.

Let's say I lose something that has sentimental value to me. If that's the case, then I'd likely be willing to offer a monetary reward for its return. Thus, it has monetary value.

Here's another way of looking at it. There are coins out there that fetch top dollar because they come from a time or are commemorative of an event that people hold dear. Because there are a lot of people that share that sentiment, they are willing to pay more for those coins when they come up for sale. Based on this, appraisers assign a higher value to those coins. Thus, sentiment has monetary value.

In the end, if you expressly insure an item for $X and you suffer a covered loss, the insurance company should pay $X to make you whole again. What you shouldn't be able to do is claim sentimental value without having expressly informed the insurer of that value beforehand. A good example would be sending a circulated 2008 penny via UPS and claiming the full $100 of default insurance that all UPS packages get should that penny fail to reach its destination.

 

It is not just bubble wrap.

I sent this box of books to a friend, and never heard a thing.


18 months later he sent me a note that he was returning a box of books.

But -- I hadn't sent any!


This is what I got back.

note the postmarks:

pictures to come in a second.

Here ya go:










And this was (originally) a very heavy duty box, meant for shipping books.

Every book was damaged, by the way.

 

Well, we are getting pretty far afield here, but I will address these points.

If one chooses to use the USPS insurance option then one is agreeing to the terms of the insurance that they purchase. Those terms can be found on the USPS site and they are pretty clear as to insurance payout. If one does not like the terms, then one does not have to use the option. You can wholeheartedly disagree with the policy all you want and can say it's none of the business of the USPS, but you also aren't forced to use the option of insurance. One may notice that I keep on putting the word option in italics and that is done to make the point that no one is forced to use or to pay for this USPS service. It is voluntary and one accepts the terms of service when they fill out the paperwork and pay their funds. There are many other ways to ship and/or insure items in transit, so no one should feel compelled to stick with one set of choices.

 

USPS is protecting itself from outside frauds by asking those who insure packages to actually prove what's in it is worth what they say it's worth. I shipped items worth 5k and only paid $70.00 for the insurance. It would be too easy for me to file a fraudulent claim (breaking item, bashing package it was in, etc), get my easy 5k without little proof of what the actual value was inside. Unfortunately, sentimental items can be priceless and one should be cautious in sending such items through a postal carrier.

People have home insurance, if their house burns down along with all their "priceless" pictures, it's not like the insurance company is going to pay them millions for lost memories through such pictures.

I don't blame USPS or any carrier. USPS already loses enough money and is depending on our tax dollars to keep them afloat for the most part. I don't want me tax money to pay for people's items because such people can insure a package at any value they feel it's worth to just them and nobody else.

 

Many businesses that routinely ship expensive items purchase shipping insurance through their business insurance policy. It's usually much cheaper that way.