Reply With QuoteNot good, I think its a bit of a bad time with couriers at the moment too much demand and not enough staff possibly.
No excuse for not covering your watch though, best of luck with appeal.
Word of warning here, I sold a watch, luckily not a very expensive one, to a member in Ireland. I sent the watch on 9th November on what I was told was a 3 day service and paid £25.62, £6.30 of which was additional cover up to £300. They have lost the watch and I lodged a claim. This was the response...
Thank you for your enquiry into the case detailed above.
We have completed our investigation into your claim and we can now confirm that the contents (wristwatch) of your parcel are excluded from compensation on all of our services.
Unfortunately we are therefore unable to offer any compensation on this occasion.
You are able to view our terms and conditions including a full list of all our exclusions at www.parcelforce.com under the “Help & Advice” section and in literature which is available at your local Post Office.
I regret we were unable to offer you a more favourable response to your claim on this occasion. For details on our appeals process, please visit our website.
Yours sincerely
Claims Customer Service Team
Parcelforce Worldwide
I have read through the list of exclusions and cannot see 'wristwatch' listed. I have appealed but don't expect to get anywhere. I've spent several infuriating hours trying to sort this out now. I will never send a watch outside the UK again, in fact I'm not sure I will ever send one anywhere again after this. I'm absolutely furious.
Not good, I think its a bit of a bad time with couriers at the moment too much demand and not enough staff possibly.
No excuse for not covering your watch though, best of luck with appeal.
Ouch, thanks for the heads up. Curious to know what exclusions they have determined apply. I’m fairly certain that where insurance has been topped up for value or item type you have a stronger case as the risk is implicitly priced and paid.Originally Posted by RS404
Must be an arbitration route somewhere. Good luck
That's bad luck, but to be fair to Parcelforce:
Conditions of Carriage1.10 “Excluded Goods” means items that are excluded from compensation cover. These include fragile goods (including ceramics, glassware, lighting, TV/PC monitors and musical instruments), valuable goods (including antiques, Collectables, jewellery, diamonds and other precious stones and watches), money, tickets (including lottery tickets and tickets for any form of transport), perishable foodstuffs and articles, or any other item which is inherently particularly susceptible to loss or damage, or the market of which is particularly variable, and any other excluded goods described under the heading “Compensation Exclusions” (or similar expression) on parcelforce.com and/or at parcelforce.com/exclusions, both as updated from time to time.
The link they provide clearly shows watches excluded from compensation https://www.parcelforce.com/help-and...e-compensation so not sure where you could take a claim
1.10 of their Terms of Carriage:
“Excluded Goods” means items that are excluded from compensation cover. These include fragile goods (including ceramics, glassware, lighting, TV/PC monitors and musical instruments), valuable goods (including antiques, Collectables, jewellery, diamonds and other precious stones and watches), money, tickets (including lottery tickets and tickets for any form of transport), perishable foodstuffs and articles, or any other item which is inherently particularly susceptible to loss or damage, or the market of which is particularly variable, and any other excluded goods described under the heading “Compensation Exclusions” (or similar expression) on parcelforce.com and/or at parcelforce.com/exclusions, both as updated from time to time
The majority of courier/logistics companies exclude watches. I believe that DHL are one of the few that will take them. Cold comfort to you now, I appreciate what a complete ballache this must be:(
Was this Southern Ireland?
Reading that makes me wonder what IS covered. An avenue you might pursue is possibly being mis-sold the extra insurance cover (presuming you disclosed what was inside the package) but that feels like a black hole to chuck money into.
Personally I'd be wary of sending ANYTHING using parcel farce now as their exclusions basically read 'we won't pay you sh*t as we exclude anything you might conceivably wish to insure'.
If you are feeling aggrieved and want a bit of catharsis then carpet bombing their social media feeds with warnings to check the insurance exclusions before sending and how they are basically selling useless insurance for most things might be worth a go.
The only other thing is to play description bingo, instead of a wrist watch it's a arm mountable time computer.
Personally I'd just use a carrier that doesn't engage in such dirty pool in future.
ADDED: Just checked a few other carriers (dhl, ups) and they also exclude watches and explicitly state not to ship them with their service (unless by special arrangement).
Last edited by julian2002; 16th December 2020 at 10:52.
Does this apply to Royal Mail Special Delivery as well? Most of the watches I have sold \ received have been sent RMSD.
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RMSD deffo covers watches up to £2,500.
It's called ParcelFarce for a reason
Sadly, at this time of year - a lot of packages go "missing", as more and more temp staff are brought in to cope.
Parcelforce are shocking. I haven’t used them for years due to a string of disputes with them. Up to 2.5k RMSD for me and over that I try to do f2f
Not of much use to you now but I bought a watch from Germany (private sale) that was delivered via DHL.
They left it on a neighbours drive (they claimed behind a parked car - but my elderly neighbour doesn't drive and hasn't owned a car for the last 10 years) after knocking on all the surrounding houses it was clear it was long gone.
DHL refunded within 3 weeks, no qualms about what was in the box they just wanted to know the value I'd paid for it which was confirmed with a PayPal receipt which was about £3000
So from my experience I'd recommend them
Have they confirmed the parcel is lost..
was there any tracking available to see its progress..
I recently used Royal Mail (not a watch)for a quoted 3 day service which eventually turned up 18 days later after posting..with the issued tracking number by the post office showing not recognised by its own system
Buyer was very understanding in the circumstances only evidence I had was proof of postage but what can you do..
People always slate Hermes but in all honesty I have never had any issues in many years of using them.
I guess all delivery companies have complaints but I didn’t realise RM/Parcelforce do not insure watches..
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Royal Mail do
Really sorry to hear. A few years ago I sent an Ingenieur abroad and I was very nervous until it arrived. No mishaps on that occasion but I don't think I'd do it again.
This is an very interesting thread. I have always used DHL before. So they don’t allow watches to be sent? (As in covered by insurance?)
What are people’s thoughts? What carriers should people use then? Or should we send via any regular courier but take out specialist insurance?
BW,
Chi Kai
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You might want to read the thread.
Someone just wrote that DHL insures watches.
I sent a watch winder back for a warranty repair using Parcelforce a few years ago. They absolutely destroyed it in transit and then resolutely refused any compensation as by their calculations (not mine...) it did not have enough packaging.
You could have put that thing in an armour plated box and it would still have been destroyed the way they treated it, suffice to say I was not impressed with a service that from memory cost me about £25.
Plenty of other threads on this, use the Search function. RMSD cover up to £2.5k, use your own insurance over this amount (e.g. Secursus).
I saw this this poster seem to have checked with DHL and they don’t send watches??
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Take your advice and re-read the thread. Someone also else said DHL exclude watches (post 8).
Any links for the DHL exclusion?
That was edited after.
DHL has insured watches without problems earlier(as in september this year).
Sorry all for the confusion about DHL!
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Sorry to hear this OP. No help to you now I know, but does anyone know whether Secursus would have paid out in this scenario with this carrier?
Cutting a very long story short, I bought a low value watch on here which was mailed in June without tracking.
It turned up in August.
You could argue why you had to pay the additional money for cover upto £300 if they were never going to honour it - possibly missold service/product?
Insurance has to be one of the biggest scams there is. At the price they're charging for this, as long as less than one in fifty packages goes missing, they're in profit. Clearly nothing close to this goes missing. And still they have a raft of exclusions which mean they're insuring virtually nothing.
Wow, offering insurance but then excluding “valuable goods,” the only goods that require insurance in the first place, or any item that is “susceptible to loss or damage.” If that isn’t a con I don’t know what is.
Hard lesson to learn. But buy your own insurance in these cases AND read the small print - there are specific T&C even for other insurance providers - like using a NEW box for packing
When I took it to the post office I told the guy I wanted to send my package, contents worth approx £300, by Special Delivery to the Republic of Ireland. He asked what the package contained, I told him 'a watch' he asked if it contained batteries, I said 'no, it's a mechanical watch'. The price was fifty something pounds, so I asked him if there was a cheaper option. He said yes, offered Parcelforce Global Value for £19.32 which takes 3 days and for an extra £6.30 I can have enhanced compensation for up to £300. So I went with that. When the purchaser contacted me to say the parcel was late I entered the tracking info on the website only to find that it was not a tracked service, there was no mention of this at the counter. So the guy at the counter asked what was in the package, I told him and I took his advice.
It's a mistake I feel anyone could have made so I thought well worth sharing. I have made an appeal against their decision and I'll update the thread with the outcome.
Could the compensation cover been for damage rather than loss?
Have you actually said all of this to Parcelforce?
From what is posted it seems that the Parcelforce agent at the Post Office misrepresented the service to you.
What happens next depends on how far you want to go.
You could for example make a report to Trading Standards about the mis-representation.
You could report this to the police as a crime of theft.
You could engage a lawyer and, on advice, possibly cite unfair terms of contract. (remember the vogons in Hitchhikers Guide?)
In my experience a lot of staff in Post Offices don’t have a scooby about what is or isnt permitted in the mail. As with anything like this it is always best to put a small amount of effort into reading the relevant terms & conditions so that you are informed.
I would done exactly the same thing as the OP- Hi Mr Post Office I’d like to send this item tracked and insured. You should be able to trust a representative of a company to know the relevant bits and bobs in what they are selling/supplying end of.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but how many of us actually read T&C’s? I don’t........
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I sent a watch to Australia with a value of £2250, knowing that Royal Mail maximum insurance was £250 for overseas I took it direct to the Parcelforce office, I explained it was a watch and I wanted to insure for the full amount of £2250 and they said no problem, I repeated a couple of times that it was a watch and received the same no problem answer.
I forget the exact amount charged but it was over £100, watch arrived in quick time and all good but reading the above would I do it again ? mmmmm
I always send it as "tool" or "mechanical measuring device" -- or anything other than the dreaded "w" word.
If nothing else, "watch" just screams "nick me!". Even "horological chronometer" is better.
Every day is school day: I thought that Royal Mail and Parcelforce were effectively the same service - knowing that RMSD covers watches (up to £2500) I would have idly assumed that Parcelforce did too - so this was useful intel.
I'd agree. It is particuarly stinging if the bod has asked what is in it - and its been declared - and that hasn't been questioned and priced for accordingly - then Parcel Force has acted in terribly bad faith and I'd be persuing that avenue. The person behind the counter should be adequately trained to do their job, to know that it wouldn't be insured and they couldn't take it and insure it.
Insurance topic discussions rumble on with regular frequency. Here is one from 2017!
https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.p...or-individuals
Sorry to hear about your watch OP. I can sympathise as I've just spent the best part of the afternoon trying to find out why RM have sent one of my son's Christmas presents back to Japan without even attempting a delivery or informing me of any problems that I could have possibly resolved.
Definitely a sign of the times, reduced staff and Covid secure working requirements putting a lot of strain on things that we all take for granted normally...
Bit of a tricky area, if the clerk states that the OP didn’t say it was a watch, what happens? As they always ask what’s in the package it’d be very simple to state on the senders receipt ‘Watch’ ‘Clothes’ ‘Sporting Goods’ etc... least that way no misunderstanding what was sent.
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I have in my appeal and that's the angle I'm emphasising.
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Just had an RM SD I was waiting for take 4 working days to arrive, the postie indicated the regional mail center is currently overwhelmed, particularly with Amazon orders and further struggling with years of underinvesting in staff and absenteeism due to Covid.
Can understand how things are going missing in such circumstances but still inexcusable if your paying for the safe carriage of your goods.
Maybe this insurance miss-selling could fall under the remit of the insurance ombudsman?
There's a UK poster on BreitlingSource who says that a batch of watches from BUK to his AD at Westfield has gone missing with RM.
What a joke.
Didn’t a batch of CWCs also go missing earlier in the year?
I used Secursus recently and was impressed by the price and ease of use. Has anyone on here ever made a claim from them, though?
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^ this. And I'd be raising it with the insurance ombudsman.
A few years ago my Linhof Technika 70 camera (valued c.£2K) was serviced by Linhof & Studio Ltd, shipped back to me via Royal Mail but with no tracking details, and subsequently declared 'lost in transit'. I was furious that the dealer did not send it via RMSD ... but endeavoured to 'keep my cool' ... intending to seek compensation because of their unreasonable shipping procedure. Enquiries dragged on for weeks and eventually I gave up all hope of seeing the camera again. However, several months later a Parcelforce van stopped outside my house and the camera was delivered. Transpired that Royal Mail had decided to 'tranship' the parcel via Parcelforce ... but the package was lost in one of Parcelforce's depots. At that time Parcelforce had a poor reputation and packages were often lost. Maybe your watch will eventually turn up ... don't give up hope.
BW
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
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