Australia Post - Insurance compensation claim - Terms and Tips

[offroad7400]

Made our first claim for lost item in transit today and discovered some recent changes.  As the seller you are only entitled to the wholesale cost of your item plus the postage paid.  If the items wholesale cost is over $50 you need to provide copy of invoice from your supplier as proof of cost.  If the wholesale cost is under $50 no invoice is needed and your claim is processed via verbal confirmation of value.

Some time ago eBay started adding codes to Australia Post labels and I suspect that enables Australia Post to track back the correct value if you ever made a claim with inflated value.  (We have always removed this code and the item number from the label).

"As per the terms of the service you have used, compensation is available of up to $100 towards the contents plus the postage. As you have advised wholesale value is over $50, please reply to this email with a copy of your wholesale invoice as a proof of value. If the $51 value happens to be the retail value and the wholesale is under $50 please reply advising the wholesale value along with the best contact number so that we may then call you to process the compensation for you".

[danieh_6]

Funny you say that, I was doing claims the other day for lost items, and the guy on the live chat said we can do more than $50 providing you have invoice. I wasn't aware of this change and have been doing lost items claims for over 3 years but apparently its been in for a year now!

[tazzieterror]

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@offroad7400 wrote:

Made our first claim for lost item in transit today and discovered some recent changes.  As the seller you are only entitled to the wholesale cost of your item plus the postage paid.  If the items wholesale cost is over $50 you need to provide copy of invoice from your supplier as proof of cost.  If the wholesale cost is under $50 no invoice is needed and your claim is processed via verbal confirmation of value.

Some time ago eBay started adding codes to Australia Post labels and I suspect that enables Australia Post to track back the correct value if you ever made a claim with inflated value.  (We have always removed this code and the item number from the label).

I did a little investigating a few weeks ago to find out exactly what is encoded into the QR codes and barcodes AP uses. There's nothing in there that indicates the value of the item.

"As per the terms of the service you have used, compensation is available of up to $100 towards the contents plus the postage. As you have advised wholesale value is over $50, please reply to this email with a copy of your wholesale invoice as a proof of value. If the $51 value happens to be the retail value and the wholesale is under $50 please reply advising the wholesale value along with the best contact number so that we may then call you to process the compensation for you".

I honestly don't see how this is supposed to work - if I buy an item from the shop for $100 as a present for a family member, and it gets lost in the post, how are you supposed to claim it back? You don't know the wholesale value, and you will have insured it for the retail value anyway.

I foresee a lot of very annoyed customers when AP accepts payment for a certain value of extra cover, but only will only pay out for a wholesale amount, assuming you can prove what that is.

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[tazzieterror]

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@danieh_6 wrote:
Funny you say that, I was doing claims the other day for lost items, and the guy on the live chat said we can do more than $50 providing you have invoice. I wasn't aware of this change and have been doing lost items claims for over 3 years but apparently its been in for a year now!

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It definitely hasn't been around for a year - I had to make a claim that was finalised last month, and there was no mention of wholesale values.

[tazzieterror]

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@offroad7400 wrote:

...

Some time ago eBay started adding codes to Australia Post labels and I suspect that enables Australia Post to track back the correct value if you ever made a claim with inflated value.  (We have always removed this code and the item number from the label).

...

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Sorry, I realise which code you're refering to now - you mean the one that's in the format of "ebay: xyz123q" on the eBay generated shipping labels, printed above the address.

I don't know what purpose that serves, but I'm confident it's not something AP has any reference to.  It's not encoded into the QR code or barcode, and AP aren't recording it at lodgements, so if AP lose an item, they don't have a copy of that code.

In saying that, it's possible AP could make a request back to eBay using the tracking number to obtain the value of the contents of that shipment, but if they're doing that, the eBay generated code wouldn't come into play.

[digital*ghost]

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@tazzieterror wrote:

I honestly don't see how this is supposed to work - if I buy an item from the shop for $100 as a present for a family member, and it gets lost in the post, how are you supposed to claim it back? You don't know the wholesale value, and you will have insured it for the retail value anyway.

I foresee a lot of very annoyed customers when AP accepts payment for a certain value of extra cover, but only will only pay out for a wholesale amount, assuming you can prove what that is.

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The current T&Cs state:

5.2 The Service consists of Australia Post’s agreement that if an article (excluding a
Valuable Document) referred to in clause 3 or 4 is lost or damaged whilst being
carried by post by Australia Post, Australia Post will, subject to clauses 6 and 7,
replace or repair the article or compensate the Claimant in an amount equal to the
lesser of the following:
5.2.1 the Claimant’s direct loss; or
5.2.2 the amount of the Limit in respect of that article.

5.4 The sender warrants that at the time of making an application in accordance with
clause 5.1.1, the Limit sought was a true representation of the lesser of the following:
5.4.1 the replacement value of the article (GST inclusive); or
5.4.2 the market value of the article (GST inclusive).

These clauses have always been in place as far as I know - I have seen many sellers over the years state that Aus Post required an invoice and would only provide the wholesale value, but any time I've been compensated I was simply asked over the phone what the value was and then was subsequently issued the money order to the value provided. 

In some of the aforementioned cases with other sellers, it involved handmade goods - I would highly resent being compensated the material cost of an item I spent many hours making, especially since if I had paid someone else for those hours, then I would be compensated as then it was be a "wholesale" cost. Cost to replace and wholesale cost isn't the same thing, either - not to my mind, anyway, especially when your supplier might have MOQs (eg an item could cost $5, but you might have to purchase at least 1000 units, and the pay a bunch of money in transport and other costs, all of which the retail cost has built in to it. Aus Post may consider this "consequential loss", but I don't). 

The funny thing is, the right to claim compensation can be signed over to our buyers, and the cost of replacement to them is obviously our sale price, not our wholesale prices, so it's a dumb clause. 

[danieh_6]

I know thats why I said apparently, they never tell of changes unless its costs increases ahaha

[porcelain_dolls_by_me]

It is normal insurance coverage to only reimburse the wholesale cost of an item

[offroad7400]

You would only print a code referencing an eBay purchase on a label for cross referencing from the carriers side. In our case with those codes removed from our MyPost record Australia Post has no idea where the sale originated from.

If I had made the insurance claim as a handmade gift from a market for example without a receipt and with an inflated value maybe they would pay it ?

But seeing as it's a MyPost Business Account they would work it out...

[tazzieterror]

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@offroad7400 wrote:
You would only print a code referencing an eBay purchase on a label for cross referencing from the carriers side. In our case with those codes removed from our MyPost record Australia Post has no idea where the sale originated from.
...

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I don't quite follow. Even if you remove that code, it's still evident that it's an eBay generated label as the AP article ID (i.e. tracking number) is prefixed with 'EBA'.

And in the event of an article going missing, the presence or absence of the that code on the label is moot - it's missing, so the article ID is what would be referenced anyway. Sure, they can probably use the article ID to reference back to the label purhcase and obtain this eBay label ID, but to what end?