Which couriers don't turn to get-out clauses for failure to deliver?

[tggzzz]

Fragile items (e.g. "glass") can break, especially if not well packed. Boring; difficult to blame carriers for that. But what about items that are "lost"?

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/01/hermes-couriers-delivery-exclusions-insurance-claim

The TD;DR is that some buggers (e.g. Herpes and others) lose packages and refuse insurance payouts because the items are "banned". Many such items are obvious, others less so: "composite items of any description" anyone?

Let's be optimistic for once. Are there any carriers that are less likely to play such "games"?

[SeanB]

Quick answer, none of them. Longer answer, pay more for a quality courier, though here it is debatable that there are actually any, as they often will use second and third parties to ship in bulk between hubs. DHL and F(up)edEx are slightly better, depending on origin and destination, and if they are in the same country.

[Jeroen3]

Mind you, DHL, DHL Parcel and DHL Express are different companies.
One deals in pallets, one is a postal service, the other is express delivery like UPS.

[Cerebus]

Fragile items (e.g. "glass") can break, especially if not well packed. Boring; difficult to blame carriers for that. But what about items that are "lost"?

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/01/hermes-couriers-delivery-exclusions-insurance-claim

The TD;DR is that some buggers (e.g. Herpes and others) lose packages and refuse insurance payouts because the items are "banned". Many such items are obvious, others less so: "composite items of any description" anyone?

Let's be optimistic for once. Are there any carriers that are less likely to play such "games"?

To point up the ridiculous nature of these "prohibited items" lists, the one for dpd local includes "documents", yes  an unqualified "documents"; there are even further exclusions for "Legal Or Business Documents".

Have a look at the list (link prior) and try and figure out if there is anything you could send that wouldn't fall foul of the list of prohibited items.

New jumper for your birthday from granny? Excluded by "clothing" and "documents" (the tag).

Anything that isn't strictly owned by a business? Excluded by "Personal Belongings".

The upside is that the list is so ridiculous that, if you ended up arguing with them about it in court, nobody could believe that they really mean it and expect to be able to carry anything, so any decent judge would throw them out on their backsides on the basis that it's clearly contrived as a mechanism for making excuses. Actually, just include that list in your pretrial submissions with a skeleton argument that it is prima facie ridiculous if they intend to stay in business and they'd fold before you got anywhere near a judge.

However, you shouldn't need to be in a position where you'd even have to do that. Why is it that so many businesses nowadays are inherently dishonest and treat their customers as the enemy from the get go?

[Black Phoenix]

To point up the ridiculous nature of these "prohibited items" lists, the one for dpd local includes "documents", yes  an unqualified "documents"; there are even further exclusions for "Legal Or Business Documents".

Have a look at the list (link prior) and try and figure out if there is anything you could send that wouldn't fall foul of the list of prohibited items.

New jumper for your birthday from granny? Excluded by "clothing" and "documents" (the tag).

Anything that isn't strictly owned by a business? Excluded by "Personal Belongings".

The upside is that the list is so ridiculous that, if you ended up arguing with them about it in court, nobody could believe that they really mean it and expect to be able to carry anything, so any decent judge would throw them out on their backsides on the basis that it's clearly contrived as a mechanism for making excuses. Actually, just include that list in your pretrial submissions with a skeleton argument that it is prima facie ridiculous if they intend to stay in business and they'd fold before you got anywhere near a judge.

However, you shouldn't need to be in a position where you'd even have to do that. Why is it that so many businesses nowadays are inherently dishonest and treat their customers as the enemy from the get go?

Well that is an impressive list of forbidden items. It's easier to just ask what they can carry!

[Cerebus]

The irony is that DPD are, in my experience as the recipient of many deliveries by then, by far one of the better couriers in terms of both delivering on time and in good condition.

[SeanB]

Well, neighbouring company Mark is going to have to travel a bit to fix a courier SNAFU, where they damaged an air handler he shipped to a client. At least the courier did not do what they did to a delivery to me, and ran a fork through the pallet.

[IO390]

The short answer is that all couriers have issues.

It's hard to get an idea of which courier is good because everyone has had a bad experience with at least one courier. Despite that courier being very good and better than the average, that customer will automatically hate that company forever.

At my company we used DPD up until recently. We send out parcels which are all worth at least about £1000 and we've had quite a few of them go missing, get damaged, left outside customer's houses (which then usually go missing). Generally they are OK but the number of faults we had with them has risen over the past year.

We recently switched to APC Overnight. Whilst not totally fault free, they are a huge improvement. They actively contact us when there is a problem, which is new to me for any courier service. With DPD we would only discover a problem when the customer complains.

The best thing you can do if you regularly send out parcels is to get a goods in transit insurance policy. We have one with Aviva which costs £250 per year, and covers up to £5000 per parcel. They pay out very quickly and we've had about £4k in claims with them in the last year. Despite that, our premium has actually dropped from £320 last year to £250 this year!

When you look at the cost of insurance provided by the courier it usually doubles the price, at least, of the delivery. Having the separate transit policy is well worth it.

To actually answer your question however, the better companies I have dealt with are: APC, DPD, Parcel Force, UPS and DHL. The others are quite terrible and are priced accordingly.

[bd139]

UPS and Royal Mail are probably the best at this but you still have to shitpost on Twitter to get the cash out of them.

[Marco]

The best thing you can do if you regularly send out parcels is to get a goods in transit insurance policy. We have one with Aviva which costs £250 per year, and covers up to £5000 per parcel. They pay out very quickly and we've had about £4k in claims with them in the last year. Despite that, our premium has actually dropped from £320 last year to £250 this year!

How do they make money? Do they take out insurance at the parcel service and then sick their lawyers on them?

[IO390]

The best thing you can do if you regularly send out parcels is to get a goods in transit insurance policy. We have one with Aviva which costs £250 per year, and covers up to £5000 per parcel. They pay out very quickly and we've had about £4k in claims with them in the last year. Despite that, our premium has actually dropped from £320 last year to £250 this year!

How do they make money? Do they take out insurance at the parcel service and then sick their lawyers on them?

Long story, but basically it's a marine cargo policy for some huge value per vehicle, and they give you 5k per parcel with couriers as a side thing. We only use that part of the policy though as we don't have our own vehicles. I guess most of the claims are for entire vehicles so they don't really notice our small claims.

[Marco]

Can't last long, insurance companies aren't in the habit of being charities.

What you need is legislation to make the market transparent and standardize the insurance limitations, give the couriers better incentives to get loss and damage under control.

PS. I wonder if drivers get instructions to treat boxes from the big online stores, which probably have proper contracts to penalize losses and damage, differently and it's only the small customers which get fucked.

[edy]

So you wonder why your packages disappear?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/05/us/ups-package-theft-trnd/index.html

 

[wraper]

Mind you, DHL, DHL Parcel and DHL Express are different companies.
One deals in pallets, one is a postal service, the other is express delivery like UPS.

Same company offering different services. UPS is not express only, it offers slow ground shipping.