Parcel2Go lost parcel and claim for negligence

vaio

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

If it would only be a £200 loss to them then I would agree with you.
However, if they were to willingly pay out on a case like this where someone opted not to pay for the required level of compensation, it could open the floodgates for claims from other people.

It's not only courier companies who provide different levels of compensation depending on the premiums paid.
Royal mail do the same, as do many insurance companies on things like travel insurance.

Yep, but as you can see from this thread, many people believe that courier firms are somehow exempt from Sale of Goods & unfair terms legislation. From their point of view it's much better to quietly pay out the claims to the few that pursue it rather than have a court publicly rule that their T&C are unfair & unenforceable.

Royal mail is a special case, I think they are protected by royal charter and under the same charter they also have to do the costly universal delivery thing.

Travel insurance is akin to house insurance, and the limits to cover don't include losses caused by the negligence of the insurer because again, any term that seeks to limit compensation in the event of breach of contract or negligence in non negotiated consumer contracts is pretty much automatically unfair & unenforceable.

arcon5

OP....in your position I'd be arguing that the term requiring you to be responsible for the negligence of the courier is an unfair term and therefore unenforceable.

Their terms don't require op to take responsibility for their negligence. Their terms make clear the risk involved in the service and offer different levels of services for different value goods... then they carry the goods and if they mess up to reimburse op based on their declarations and the service purchased.

vaio

Their terms attempt to limit compensation in the event of breach of contract or negligence which, as per the unfair terms link I posted earlier (
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/bus...rms/oft143.pdf ), is likely to be an unfair term and therefore unenforceable.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=3252890 is what is likely to happen if the OP sticks to their guns

arcon5

vaio wrote: »

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=3252890 is what is likely to happen if the OP sticks to their guns

That is completely different. It didn't go to court, they didn't even abide by their own terms by reattempting deliver and in this case the idiot delivering to parcel left it in/behind a bin.

What your suggesting contradicts the terms of every major courier, had these terms been so unfair it would have long before now been subjected to action by the OFT or there would at least be some case law to go on.

They offered a service 'we will carry your parcel up to the value of £20 for £5', ops accepted this, now ops saying the parcel is worth £250......

...... so if anything op has misrepresented the parcel to be carried.

If op entered the value of £250, their systems prompts you to purchase the correct service, so they can argue op failed in his duty of care.

They could also argue op hasn't attempted to mitigate his potential losses and limit his exposure to losses, by ensuring the service purchased was in fact suitable for the parcel being sent.

astra1975

No arcon5, I didn't misrepresent the parcel. I did state its value at £250 and I didn't take the additional insurance. I felt that by paying a premium for using the Citi-link service, rather than a cheaper courier, would be sufficient, especially given the difficulty in losing a large clearly labelled parcel by a supposedly well reputed courier. P2G have not provided any evidence of a proper investigation into the loss either.

vaio

arcon5 wrote: »

That is completely different. It didn't go to court, they didn't even abide by their own terms by reattempting deliver and in this case the idiot delivering to parcel left it in/behind a bin.

What your suggesting contradicts the terms of every major courier, had these terms been so unfair it would have long before now been subjected to action by the OFT or there would at least be some case law to go on.

They offered a service 'we will carry your parcel up to the value of £20 for £5', ops accepted this, now ops saying the parcel is worth £250......

...... so if anything op has misrepresented the parcel to be carried.

If op entered the value of £250, their systems prompts you to purchase the correct service, so they can argue op failed in his duty of care.

They could also argue op hasn't attempted to mitigate his potential losses and limit his exposure to losses, by ensuring the service purchased was in fact suitable for the parcel being sent.

Don't know about completely different, both negligence/breach of contract, both lost the parcel, the actual mechanism that caused the loss doesn't really matter and might well be unknown.

Yep, it didn't go to court, I guess for the reasons I suggested earlier in that the unrecoverable costs would be more than just paying the claim not to mention avoiding the judicial scrutiny of the T&C.

Both cases involve the loss of a package worth a couple of hundred quid, why should the outcomes be different?

Why do you think couriers are exempt from the SoG & Unfair terms laws? Why should they be allowed to limit compensation in the event of negligence/breach of contract when virtually no other business can when dealing with consumers?

I think the real problem is that consumers (rather than businesses) using couriers is a fairly recent development and the T&C/case law hasn't yet caught up and been rewritten to reflect the additional protection that consumers are entitled to.

astra1975

Thanks for all the replies so far, but has ANYONE actually gone through the small claims court for a negligence case similar to mine?

vaio

astra1975 wrote: »

No arcon5, I didn't misrepresent the parcel. I did state its value at £250 and I didn't take the additional insurance. I felt that by paying a premium for using the Citi-link service, rather than a cheaper courier, would be sufficient, especially given the difficulty in losing a large clearly labelled parcel by a supposedly well reputed courier. P2G have not provided any evidence of a proper investigation into the loss either.

OP, as above I'd have a read of the unfair terms rules and send a LBA.

vaio

astra1975 wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies so far, but has ANYONE actually gone through the small claims court for a negligence case similar to mine?

I think you are going to struggle finding someone that has been through the small claims process as I suspect couriers aren't going to defend on a claim worth a few hundred pounds.

They will try and wear you down with delays/poor investigations/form filling and T&C references but if you stick to your guns then pragmatically they will fold at the LBA stage as in the previous thread http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=3252890

astra1975

thanks vaio. I have sent a letter before action and P2G are not budging. I mentioned in my LBA that I wanted some evidence of an investigation being made into the "loss" of my parcel - there was no reply on this question.

I'm very keen to take this to court now....