Claiming on Post Office parcel insurance

raspberrycheesecake

Hi

I sent two parcels via the Post Office with a value of £300 each. The girl on the desk asked if I wanted to take out insurance and i did, at £300 per parcel. This cost me quite a lot of money to send each parcel (about £26 each) but I thought the insurance was worth it just in case. How right I was!

So the parcels no longer exist due to the Post Office destroying them in error, and they've now accepted responsibiliy and will refund me. They have asked for proof of the value of the parcels and I send them a copy of the original purchase invoice for the content of one parcel (both parcel contents were identical). They then came back to me and asked for the same for the second parcel. I explained they were identical but they asked for a second copy so I thought fair enough, contacted the company that manufactures the items and got a quotation (same product code etc as the first parcel). I couldn't supply a purchase invoice as the second parcels contents / item was purchased by someone else.


Now the Post Office are saying they can only refund me one parcel as I HAVE to provide them with an original purchase invoice for the content item in parcel two.

Now at the time in the branch, the girl offered me insurance, accepted payment for insurance and never once gave me T&C's for the policy or mentioned anything about if I had to claim I would need to have a copy of the original purchase invoice!!!

My argument is that they've accepted payment for the insurance policy without pointing out these terms to me prior to sending the parcels so how can they start demanding things like this after the incident has occured? And surely one invoice and one quotation for the same part numbers is adequate enough for them to process? This is just to get the value of the items back, nevermind the several weeks delays its caused, severly hacked off my customer who's goods they were and all the hours of telephone calls and emails that I've had to waste!!!

Any clarification of my rights would be much apprecaited!

raspberrycheesecake

Thanks, but they never gave me any T&C's to read / agree?

I even went past this morning to the same branch to get a copy to check them and they couldn't supply me with a copy. They just said to look at the website. I've since been on the website and can't find anything that tells you the T&C's of the parcel insurance policy.

[Deleted User]

raspberrycheesecake wrote: »

My argument is that they've accepted payment for the insurance policy without pointing out these terms to me prior to sending the parcel

It's your own responsibility to read the terms and conditions of such insurance. The T&Cs are on their website and are available on demand from the Post Office. If you don't have the original receipt, they won't be refunding you.

However, since they admit destruction of both parcels I'm surprised that they haven't offered at least token "compensation" as a gesture of goodwill.

You might have more luck with this if you don't give them your "argument" and instead seek at least some recompense. I would expect a refund of the postal charge, for example.

raspberrycheesecake wrote: »

I even went past this morning to the same branch to get a copy to check them and they couldn't supply me with a copy.

They can certainly provide them if you demand it.
Waste of time now, though.

WatchMan

Does seem a little unreasonable to be honest.

The relevant term takes some finding on the website - you wouldn't expect someone to browse this while at the counter. The same goes for expecting someone to request a policy booklet and read this... with the queue that forms at my post office, I'd bet on someone getting shot if they were to take the time to read a policy document!

Given the importance of the term, you'd expect that staff would ask a very simple question: "do you have an original receipt?".

I know the post office has a number of stages in the complaints process. I'm not sure how much luck you'll have. I'd have thought that they would offer something further... even if it isn't the full cost of the destroyed item.

[Deleted User]

WatchMan wrote: »

I'd have thought that they would offer something further... even if it isn't the full cost of the destroyed item.

The OP won't get anything towards the cost of the items, as an original receipt is required in order to claim on the insurance. Very similar to most insurance of that nature to be honest; the claimant cannot simply itemise products that may have been in the parcel-there has to be some evidence provided. If it were otherwise, it would be so open to abuse that it wouldn't be feasible to offer such insurance.

However, in the circumstances I would expect the Post Office to refund the cost of postage and the insurance premium. The Post Office have accepted liability for the lost parcels, so should offer some compensation for that too.

Probably best for the OP to keep away from using terms like "My argument", "hacked off" and "unreasonable" and go for a less confrontational approach if making a complaint about this.

[Deleted User]

raspberrycheesecake wrote: »

severly hacked off my customer who's goods they were

One more thing, if you were sending these items to a "customer" then you should have really been using specialist business insurance. Obviously far more expensive (and you'd have to log exactly what was in each parcel prior to despatch) it would provide a more appropriate level of cover to prevent occurrences such as this in the future..