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I am not exactly sure where to post this, so I hope this is ok. I sold a Lladro to a customer and shipped it with insurance through FedEx. The customer received it and opened a case because it was shattered into a bunch of pieces. I always make sure to pack my Lladros well. Anyways they sent pictures, so I refunded them their money and I filed a claim with FedEx and sent the pictures as well. I just received a letter from FedEx saying they denied my claim because there was no damage to the box. I have received stuff before and know that there doesn’t need to be damage done to the box for something to get broken even if it is packed well. Has this happened to anyone? Is there anything I can do or am I out $300.
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Frostys, I think maybe this would be best posted in the “Shipping – Final Frontier” Topic area but will reply here and maybe Jay or Ryan can and will maybe move the topic over to that section.
In any case having had a ton of experience with shipping and trucking / freight through the years at my other companies there is not good news, but who knows.
I have posted on this topic before but that is probably buried deep in the old Blog Format.
Here is the reason. On larger claims all of the carriers [incl. USPS, UPS, FedEx, Delta, etc], will assign reps to investigate larger claims. I am unsure what that set point is but the bottom line is that they look for reasons to not pay off. They in almost all cases of when I spoke to reps, they wanted to know if we had our packing procedures submitted for approval [which we did=we were a large company that shipped to world class companies], and did we follow our SOP [standard operating procedures.
They will always point back to their online processes and ask did you pack the way you were supposed to and if so would it pass the infamous DROP TEST!
Here are a couple of links. FedEx assumes you, your staff or your in house training provides the systems for proper packing in order to withstand the following. Once you check out these links, I think you will get the idea.
http://images.fedex.com/us/services/pdf/PKG_Package_Test_Application.pdf
And the last two above are simply amazing plus very educational videos of what these guys really can do and how amazing they really are. Well worth the 20 minutes in length on the last one. the others are just a minute or two.and the Chinese guys are hilarious, especially as compared to the high tech of the FedEx and UPS guys, but they are aware, they must PASS THE TEST!. They are just trying to see if their package will pass that “infamous drop test”.
Considering what all that these guys do, it is really amazing.. BUT I have been told numerous times face to face on the floor of our plant that it is up to us as sellers, shippers to make sure our packages can withstand these types of conditions. They can’t baby us. The do 25 million packages a day. That means every person in the USA every 10 days.
Bottom line, they will questions us as to how well we packed, especially if you are a small home business doing something like Ebay. I use a method I call the “Cocoon” method [sort of like a sarcopagus concept] and my breakables have a 7 layer process my wife and I use. We DO TEST occasionally and take items we are going to donate and pack then up and do the following: 3 foot high drop test on a corner from 3 ft. up on the garage concrete, we roll boxes down our office stairs, we even have stood on top on a test box. AND be fore warned those FREE USPS boxes are not 175 Test Rated burst strength. The flutes are thin and so is the overall wall thickness. The Ebay boxes are much better.
A design problem we had in art school decades ago was to design a package that had nice graphics and exterior design but had to contain one raw egg and to get a passing grade for that assignment it had to pass a drop from the classroom window down to the outside ground [concrete]. I passed!! 🙂
But with a box showing no exterior damage and no photos to prove it. Well, you can try.
We have only had 4 items broken since 2002 using our method and that fourth one was just last week. A tall glass compote 16″ high. But I made sure to ask the customer for a photo of the outside of the box. It was crushed. I included that along with two other photos and a written description of our 7 layer “cocoon” process. We have gotten reimbursed the first 3 times and still waiting on this last one, but am confident.
Good luck..
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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was this FedEx ground? when they denied me, i called FedEx customer service and appealed. they refunded me, BUT my tracking did say “damaged, unable to deliver”, so that was my case. if they don’t refund you, next time insure your FedEx packages with ShipSaver, the 3rd party app on ebay.
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