Recently sent a package from MI to AZ only to have the box get damaged prior to arriving on the doorstep in AZ. UPS claimed that the contents were damaged beyond repair and proceeded to discard them. The lady on the phone flat out said to me after looking at the report, "Looks like about 10 bottles of beer were damaged." I found that odd... From what I understand, they're now sending me a claim sheet to fill out so they can cut me a check. And somewhere on that sheet is where I can ask them to pay me for the damaged goods. Has anyone ever ran into this problem? If so, how did you go about claiming your package contents as damaged beer? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
These shipping companies have a right hand and a left hand, and neither knows what the other is up to. The person on the phone won't actually process your claim. Another dept. will, and if you say it's beer they won't cover the expense because you can't ship beer without the proper licensing. And you can't say it isn't beer because it sounds like it's listed on a report. It's a loss. This is from personal experience.
Fill out any paperwork you are given. Try to be as vague as possible then cross your fingers and see what happens. The most important thing is to make sure your trade partner is in the loop. Good luck!
Good ol' "yeast samples" to the rescue. It's accurate, and the left hand may just assume the right hand assumed it was beer because it was in beer bottles.
This is the scenario I was afraid of... But hopefully this will work! That's what I was thinking of saying.
UPS reimbursed me when I had my first and only breakage. I had a growler break, and I didn't have to fill anything out, I just had to go back to the brewery, buy another growler, brought it to the UPS store, gave them the receipt (including a hefty tip!) and they actually re-packed it and shipped it. I think I got the check in the mail about 2-3 weeks later to cover the initial shipping cost, and the growler. Just fill out the info... they'll pay. EDIT: The only thing they tried to do though, was keep the bottles that DIDN'T break (they wanted to discard them, and give me their value in a check) I explained that I couldn't replace many of them, and they gave me a box to take them out to my car, and made a note in their system saying I was taking them. All around easy experience really.
I had an interesting experience. I sent a package to a guy that got damaged. One 12oz. BCBS broke, and they sent the rest back to me to be repacked and reshipped, but they charged me for it. I called and talked to a nice woman who said sorry, do you want to make a claim? I said no, I just don't want to be charged for a package that didn't get delivered. She took that charge off and told me when I do reship, it would be free as well, and call back if I see a charge for it. I added a replacement BCBS, repacked, and reshipped. My trading partner said that another BCBS broke, but at least this time it got to him. He appreciated my communication and efforts, so he said don't worry about it. I checked my records though, and I did end up getting charged for that package, so I called again. I talked to a different lady and told her the story. She said that the previous woman didn't record that my next package would be free, and she couldn't remove the charge. I told her that I'm upset that the package had gotten damaged again, but I'm only interested in getting the shipping fee back as promised. She said she couldn't do it. All she could do was send me the paperwork to make a claim. I asked several more questions like do I have to prove what was in the package if it's under $100? She said no. So I asked why they wouldn't just reimburse me the shipping cost if now I can file two claims for $100 each. Which one is going to cost your company more? Logic failed on that one, so I told her to just send me the forms, which I probably wasn't going to fill out anyway since it was just like $12. A few days go by, and I get a letter from the shipping company, expecting it to be my forms. It ends up being a check for $100. I'm guessing she filed the claim for me while we were conversing. The moral is that one hand really doesn't know what the other is doing at these big shipping companies, and the people you talk to either don't have the intelligence to make an informed decision on the proper way to handle a claim, or they don't have the authority. Why it was so easy for one woman to reimburse my $12 one time (took about two minutes) and so hard for another to overpay me by $88 (was on the phone for over an hour) is still a mystery to me. As for my trading partner, I took some of that extra money and sent him a piece of glassware he'd been searching for to make up for the wait and the broken bottle. Karma points.
First breakages in 150 trades. I think the shipping company had an employee who was having a bad week. I worked at one as a loader for 2 1/2 years, and honestly I punched, kicked, threw, and dropped my share of packages when they were working me too hard. My trading partner, mhenson42, could vouch for my packin' skilz as well.
