UPS Insurance Claim, advice please :(

Everytime I have had a dealing with carriers they always deny claims. I sold a pair of Mackie 824s and shipped them in the original boxes with extra padding materials. My buyer said he was sitting on his living room couch snd watched the ups driver back up in the driveway and commence to kicking the boxes off the back of the truck. Ups of course denied the claim for insufficient packing. Long story short. It took 3 months of relentless hounding before they finally conceded and paid the claim. But it is true. No matter how infuriating the situation is, you have to kiss their butts all the way and win allies....
I'm going through a reverse situation right now. I bought an Anderson guitar and the seller simply slapped a label on the case and shipped it to me. No box or padding..,
Needless to say, it didn't make it to me in good condition. Now the guy I bought it from is tying up my money by filing a claim with ups. Yeah, right....
It's gonna be a couple weeks before eBay refunds my cash because of the sellers stupidity here...

I had a guy ship me a guitar once without a case. No box. The guitar was simply wrapped in about 3 inches of bubble wrap with a label on it. Amazing....

Chris
 
I've dealt with two or three luthiers on custom instruments, and I found that one swears by FedEx while the next swears by UPS. It may be a matter of how easy the local office is to deal with, or just luck of the draw, but they always seem to have strong opinions on the carrier they will use. Cliff does so much shipping that I'm certain he has a good feel for it.

The study was a few years ago, and so may not be at all relevant now, but Consumer reports compared UPS, USPS, and FedEx for lost packages, rough handling (using some sort of sensors in the packages), and on-time delivery. At that time, USPS was by far the best, with UPS in the middle and FedEx trailing.

I think the last time this topic came up was while I was waiting for my Ultra to make the 8 day trip from NH to WA over a holiday weekend. I breathed a big sigh of relief when it came through in perfect condition.

To the OP: I hope you manage to get this straightened out without too much hassle. I agree that you should not issue a full refund at this point, and you also may have some leverage of UPS for changing the status to refused when you have evidence that the package was accepted originally.
 
Never expect concern for the safely of your shipments with these couriers. Expect the worst treatment. I was inside the massive UPS depot in NYC once. Horror. What I witnessed was about 12 huge dump trucks in a row with hundreds of boxes in each. There was a conveyer belt dropping boxes from above into these and these dump trucks would tilt and dump boxes onto another conveyer belt some boxes were dropping 20 feet onto other boxes.

Also remember, never expect these companies to pay any attention to your "FRAGILE" OR "THIS SIDE UP ONLY" writing. To these shippers, there is no top, bottom and sides. When packaging, design your packaging for the worst abuse reasonably possible and you will be fine.
 
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steadystate said:
So, the buyer claims the crack happened during shipment, and then returned it without the trem cavity cover, the arm, the allen wrench, or the preamp (which he "really likes")? Something is rotten, either with the buyer, with UPS, or both
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At this point I'm not even sure that the buyer knows the guitar is back with me, maybe I'm just too trusting :( I'm liking the idea of getting small claims/trading standards involved if it all goes pear shaped.
 
xpenno said:
At this point I'm not even sure that the buyer knows the guitar is back with me, maybe I'm just too trusting :( I'm liking the idea of getting small claims/trading standards involved if it all goes pear shaped.
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He must know if he had the guitar in his possession and returned it to UPS.

Small claims/trading wont be involved if there is a dispute, eBay will freeze the payment if it was paid by Paypal and make a "decision"

I was ripped off this way and eBay were useless..if i was you i would not leave any money in your Paypal account for eBay to freeze, at least until you know you are protected.
 
ebay may give the buyer back his money, but after that ebay isnt involved anymore, small claims will work. It wont come to small claims though, ups will back down before that actually happens, you just have to show them you are willing to take that meassure if it came down to it. give it a shot xpenno, print you local small claims papers and fax them to the claim department along with a copy of your claim form and denial letter. Ups will back down and send you a check, ive seen it happen many times, ups wont pay a high dollar lawyer to go defend them in court over a damage claim it will cost them more money fighting it then paying you.
 
+1

FedEx paid up when I sued them in small claims. They settled before it went to court.

PayPal didn't back down (a different case), but that's because I sued them in San Jose, their home territory.

Filing a suit in small claims is pretty easy -- just fill out some paperwork and pay about $30. Everybody should learn how to do it -- then we'd have less fraud.
 
I once had UPS pay a claim after they put a forklift through a 1950s Gibson Vanguard amp. They took the speaker and chassis completely off the frame. It took a long time and there were a lot of weirdnesses on the way.

I just had my local Music Go Round (used music regional chain) friends tell me a whole litany of UPS horror stories. They said if you read the fine print of UPS insurance it has enough loopholes to make the insurance almost worthless. Fortunately I've only had a couple of mishaps in shipping which is amazing given all that I've shipped.

Good luck,

Mike
 
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