Sent a brand new £600 bike to a mate before Christmas using Senditnow – which is actually ParceForce and they’ve “LOST IT”. The bike was scanned and collected ok and then rescanned when it entered the Kidlington depot nr Oxford. After that nothing. PF have spent January looking into it and now say “really sorry but its lost” and offered me £100. Every time I say no – its stolen they say no, its defintely lost! Really, scanned in and then disappeared inside the depot @ Christmas!!!

Ive used SenditNow several times with no problems and I suppose I should have paid extra for the £600 of insurance.

Be aware and always pay for the insurance!

Bike details:-
Whyte 629, med 2014
Frame no. F401S2689

you sent a bike not insured for its full value !! 😯

Same happened to a mate of mine who bought a bike second hand. Luckily the bloke he bought it from had it fully insured.

It got scanned at the depot and then disappeared.

Try giving the royal mail group (part of which is parcleforce) investigation branch a shout… Email securityhelpdesk@royalmail.com, phone number 0207 239 6655. They may be able to help.

Same happened to a mate of mine who bought a bike second hand.

Technically it was lucky for the person he bought it from who would have been liable if he hadn’t insured it…

Sorry to the OP – it’s a crock but that’s what the insurance is for. It might turn up – they actually do genuinely lose things sometimes.

renton – Member

you sent a bike not insured for its full value !!

I rarely use insurance, but yes I prob would for a bike.

you sent a bike not insured for its full value !!

This.

I’m not sure how you’d stand by reporting it to the Police as stolen – probably a dead end but worth looking into (or even telling PF that’s what you’re doing?

Be aware and always pay for the insurance!

This. Parcelforce once “lost” an expensive amplifier I’d sold on Ebay. Took me months to get the money back out of them, and that was with proper insurance.

+1 for paying extra for insurance.

Also, social media is your friend. A few tweets to their customer services dept might clear the way for you.

I’d be pressurising plod also

is it worth checking your house insurance?
If you’ve got ‘away from home’ cover they might pay out.

i once lost something at work – which was insured.

We could track it leaving the country and coming back in (to the same depot) on route from sussex to manchester? then it disappeared. they said the the label must have fallen off, and paid out on the missing item.

2 weeks later it got delivered back to us – intirely intact, labels etc in place. with a new PF label, directing it back to us.

very strange.

i too have had things go missing in the post… never anything of £600 in vaule, but i’ve lost £150 worth of stuff, and it’s a harsh lesson, but now, EVERYTHING i send is insured for the correct vaule.

Email the Chief Exec ‘gary.simpson@parcelforce.com’ and copy in this lady lynn.gawthorpe@parcelforce.co.uk.

Years ago when I worked in a bike shop parcel force delivered a load of Marins to us, and one extra parcel from a different supplier. He tried to count the extra parcel in as one of the number of bikes, only discovered after going through the now empty boxes and tallying the despatch notes. Called the despatch manager and they discovered our missing £800 Marin tucked away in a quiet corner of the warehouse. Regular parcel courier trick, if they could be arsed they’d find it. Don’t bother with plod they’ll just refer you to Royal Mail investigations.

Whether it’s lost or stolen is irrelevant speculation, if they can’t find it then neither you nor they can say it’s “definitely” anything.

They’ve lost / stolen a package, so you’re entitled to compensation up to the value it was insured for. You didn’t insure it properly? Sucks to be you, I’m afraid.

You might get somewhere “as a gesture of goodwill” if you go up the food chain and appeal to their better nature / desire for good PR, but if your opening salvo is likely to be “thieving bastards” then I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high.

They’ve lost / stolen a package, so you’re entitled to compensation up to the value it was insured for. You didn’t insure it properly? Sucks to be you, I’m afraid.

You might think.

Royal mail refused to pay up for an insured item that got lost in the post. Admittedly not as big or expensive as a bike, but above their minimum value and i paid the extra to cover it.

They agreed it was lost, agreed i had insurance, but refused to pay out as i didn’t have proof that the contents of the parcel were what i said they were. I showed them the print outs of the sale arranged on here, of the payment into my PP address, etc. but still refused, kind of insinuating I might have set it all up for a scam and that the item never existed.

In the end they refunded my postage and gave me some stamps as goodwill.

*****s

They agreed it was lost, agreed i had insurance, but refused to pay out as i didn’t have proof that the contents of the parcel were what i said they were.

Eh? If it’s insured to a value and they lose it, what’s it matter what the contents were? It could be an empty box, you’ve still paid the premium for the extra insurance.

kind of insinuating I might have set it all up for a scam and that the item never existed.

The only way that would work is if the courier was complicit in the scam, surely?

Royal mail refused to pay up for an insured item that got lost in the post. Admittedly not as big or expensive as a bike, but above their minimum value and i paid the extra to cover it.

They tried that with me once, I didn’t argue with them just took them to small claims court and got my money that way!

Thanks for all the input.

The bike is already reported to the police as “lost” and have emailed PF chief exec, so watch this space – or not.

Like I said admit it was my fault for not fully insuring it, I usually do, just got caught out.

Anyone else think the need for insurance is morally bankrupt?

I pay a professional company for a professional service, then I pay them extra to do it properly and not lose/nick my stuff?!!

Yes Mr Smith, it’s £11,000 for your new hip but I suggest you pay the extra £2000 insurance in case I screw it to your elbow by mistake…

I suppose that they’d argue that they’re offering the option to send it cheaper if it is of low value – eg they could quote on the basis of the value of each item and make the ‘insurance’ mandatory.

They have to put a limit on value covered or people could ship a sqillion quid Van Gough and claim for it if it gets lost.

Whether or not Senditnow’s £100 limit is acceptable for the cost of shipping, I dunno

Royal mail refused to pay up for an insured item that got lost in the post. Admittedly not as big or expensive as a bike, but above their minimum value and i paid the extra to cover it.

They agreed it was lost, agreed i had insurance, but refused to pay out as i didn’t have proof that the contents of the parcel were what i said they were. I showed them the print outs of the sale arranged on here, of the payment into my PP address, etc. but still refused, kind of insinuating I might have set it all up for a scam and that the item never existed.

In the end they refunded my postage and gave me some stamps as goodwill.

I had a similar issue with some forks that got dropped in transit snapping the rebound adjuster shaft (the old manitou where the adjuster was a big ~30mm aluminium knob that connected to a plastic shaft inside).

They tried to accuse me of deliberately selling broken forks as I couldn’t provide the packageing (becasue I didn’t think to keep hold of a load of fork oil soaked cardboard). A lot of persistent e-mails and they eventualy refunded ‘as a good will gesture’.

I think my last word on the subject was “what exactly was the point of the insurance you sold me if you will only pay out on good will” to which they didn’t respond.

I could kind of see their point, that the system is potentially open to abuse (break part, sell on ebay, buyer complains, RM pays up, seller get’s the money for a new part) as they’ve no idea what’s actually in the box, but then why offer the insurance. I guess private customers are probably such a small part of their business but probably generate the bulk of the issues.

I cut corners on parcel insurance except for items over £100. I sent a fox36 fork via RM back in 2006. It vanished and the saga would have broken a lesser person. First they said signed for. So I pressed this. Then amazingly they said ‘lost at Portsmouth central depot’. I pressed for full insured payout- had to complete deadline letter time after time requesting more info ‘if we don’t receive info withing 2days/case close’ etc. I asked for Police involvement and hey presto a cheque within two days. Weird that.

A bike/huge box doesn’t disapear. Kick up a fuss op. It may be sat somewhere and/or a member of staff may have seen it loaded somewhere. I asked for centre manager, customer service manager etc

Anyone else think the need for insurance is morally bankrupt?

Yeah, me too.

Why exactly do you *need* insurance?

Insurance essentially means the insurer pays out, rather than Parcel Force, yet its the customer stumping up the insurance premiums for a risk they have no control over. Parcel Force have a duty of care regardless of any insurance taken out.

I would use small claims court if you have evidence of the contents. Send them the summons form prior to actually starting proceedings and they may just pay up.

Why exactly do you *need* insurance?

Because it’s a way of controlling your estimate of value. If everything posted had free unlimited cover that the Post Office were duty bound to compensate for, the first time a Christmas card went missing it’d crash the UK economy.

Shipping company once lost £15k and 2000kg of steel ‘teeth’ for an urgent machine breakdown. Mild steel material – worth nothing more than scrap value to anyone else. Seller had shipped a few times previously. Fully tracked from the States to the UK, cleared customs, then disappeared from the clearing house to our factory!

Unfortunately theft is endemic at Royal Mail / Parcelforce. Some good articles on the net if you do a bit of Googling that will certainly put you off sending more than just birthday cards and correspondence.

The fact you need to pay extra for insurance is basically them admitting that there’s a chance they may break or lose your parcel. Hardly a great advertisement for business. Its really shocking to hear of people’s difficulties receiving compensation though. I didn’t realise they’d got that bad.

I’d hardly say that theft was endemic…. In 13 years of being a postie I only know of 2 cases of proven theft of mail in my local area. But as with any large organisation there are some idiots that spoil it for the rest and end up causing some people to tar the rest of us with the same brush. Boils my piss when I hear of it tho, hence putting up the IB number earlier in the thread.

I always thought it more than coincidence that on the three occasions I have been sent cash in the post, it has never been delivered.

I know that you are advised not to send cash but do they have some way of scanning for it within envelopes somewhere??!

Birthday cards are easy to identify in the post and often contain money.

My wife had a big birthday last week and got a lot of cards though the post, at least 3 of them had been tampered with.

RM have self-insured their ‘transit’ risk for years – they decide what premium to charge & they pay (or not) the claims. No insurance company is involved so they will fight each case as it’s their income being lost.

The reason they differentiate & charge additional costs is to make the system equitable for all users. If they didn’t put a limit and charge the surplus they would need to work out the average value of goods they carry (almost impossible so they’d err on the high side)and charge for every single consignment on the basis of that valuation.

If they assumed an average value of (say) £1,000 then their charges would reflect this and likely price them out of the market for a vast majority of the items they currently carry.

As it is, they set their basic rates based on the low value of a majority of goods sent & charge for any increased exposure accordingly.

FWIW, hauliers in the UK tend to use RHA terms & conditions that limit their liability to £1,300 per tonne irrespective of the value/nature of the goods – I reckon a 30lb mtb would net you around £17 on that basis.

And they do genuinely lose stuff. Worked at the big local sorting office a few years back.

End of Feb someone moved a big lorry trailer that had been parked up at the back for a few weeks after it had been emptied.

Except they forgot to actually empty it. You can fit a lot of Christmas cards in a lorry trailer!

Live in hope it may turn up. Hermes was used to send a guitar to me. Was ‘Lost’ twice. Eventually, three months late, it appeared. I emailed the seller (who by this time had refunded my money) a few times hat it had turned up and I was willing to pay. He never got back in touch, I can only presume he had his money from the insurance people.

Maaany years ago a pal of my Dad who was an architect got the job of designing a new sorting office, I think it was for Stevenage. The main feature of the sorting hall was a gallery running right along above the sorting floor, fitted with mirror glass, for the security people to watch the sorters. Go figure, as they say.

devash – Member

The fact you need to pay extra for insurance is basically them admitting that there’s a chance they may break or lose your parcel.

Well, yes. Of course there is.

I would not trust parcel force to deliver anything for me,

My YT made it all the way from Germany into the UK with DHL and then parcelforce took over, i watched it traced until it was delivered and signed for, called the wife at home to make sure it was there, surprise surprise the bike wasn’t there, called parcel force who told me it was there, told them it wasn’t millions of times and demanded they tell me the post code they had sent it too, yup it was a house 70 miles away!! The next magic turn of events was that it suddenly then was “retrieved” and delivered the next day……a little odd i thought.

timthetinyhorse – Member

The next magic turn of events was that it suddenly then was “retrieved” and delivered the next day……a little odd i thought.

Is that not just exactly what you’d expect them to do if they misdeliver an item? Go and see if they can get it back then get it to you superfast? Really not sure what’s odd in this picture. Obviously it should have gone to the right place first time but you seem to be unhappy that they fixed their error quickly and effectively.

@northwind you dont see this as odd?? how the hell did it go to a totally different address?? not even similar. They couldn’t explain it at all just that mystically it turned up again…….