T&C's are they worth claiming against?

[stuscfc1883]

Hi Caggers,

 

My company sends parcels and pallets out on a regular basis,

 

we've recently had another damaged in transit thrown out by APC due to their Terms & Conditions where they state they don't insure Acrylic Products through their network. Therefore they have walked away from our claim, almost £170 at cost to replace the said damaged goods.

 

I've been here before with another carrier and successfully received £300+ back on damages they said they wouldn't pay out on but I had to issue court papers to get it, so a pain for sure . . . that company though didn't have these acrylic bits in their Terms & Conditions so i'm unsure where I stand re APC, any words of wisdom will be gratefully received.

 

Thanks

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid that it would appear that you've started halfway through the story.

Why don't you begin at the beginning – not too much narrative, a bullet pointed chronology, so that we are fully informed and we don't have to ask any questions.

[stuscfc1883]

5 hours ago, BankFodder said:

I'm afraid that it would appear that you've started halfway through the story.

Why don't you begin at the beginning – not too much narrative, a bullet pointed chronology, so that we are fully informed and we don't have to ask any questions.

 

Sorry lol . . . i've an acrylic fabricating company making retail/display products out of acrylic and we ship our products around the UK and Ireland and currently use APC for our overnight shipments.

As with all carriers there are times of annoyance when things get damaged in transit, on this occasion it was a shipment of sneeze screens which for some reason got split into 2 separate deliveries, 2x the first day and 2x 3 days later, the first parcels arrived perfectly, however the second lot were damaged.

My customer sent me pics of the damages and I made a claim towards APC for the cost replacements and free carriage to send them out.

I've then received the usual claims form which i completed.

They then contact me to say they're really sorry but they don't cover acrylic products in their terms and conditions and promptly had attached the said t&c's with markers to highlight the relevant parts.

 

So that's it in a nutshell . . . up the creek without a paddle or am I?

 

Thanks

 

I must add i'm used to dealing with these claims, 30+ years, and ALL carriers are the same in their processing or should I say the slowing down of the claims process so you give up, but this is the first that i've seen have terms and conditions saying they're not 'covering' the insurance of these products or materials they're made of.

Edited December 14, 2020 by stuscfc1883

[BankFodder]

Thank you, I had a look at their list of prohibited items and it refers to "acrylics" and when I consult this word on the Internet, the first hit is Wikipedia which talks about acrylic paint.

Secondly, I think an important question to ask is how has the fact that you have shipped products made out of acrylics affected the risk of damage. I would normally expect that a prohibited item would be listed in contemplation of a particular kind of damage.
So, if "glass" is prohibited then that would be because of the possibility of the glass being damaged. If the glass was in a window frame and the frame was damaged but the glass remained intact, then the kind of damage contemplated by the inclusion of "glass" in the list did not occur and therefore the contemplated peril – broken glass – should not be the issue.

And exactly the same way, they include gearboxes which contain invasive liquids on their prohibited items list. This seems to me to contemplate the fact that there might be a leakage which might itself be construed as being damage to the gearbox – or of course, a leaking "invasive fluid" might impact the goods being transported by other customers.

If the gearbox in fact suffered impact damage and there was no release of invasive liquids, then they would be wrong to refuse compensation because it was on their prohibited items list because the kind of damage contemplated by the inclusion of the item had not occurred.

I hope you are holding your own on this explanation so far.

So what I'd like to know is – what were the acrylic products that were being carried, what kind of damage occurred.

If you have read around the sub- forums you will see that Hermes even tries to rely on its prohibited items list to decline liability for loss – as if the fact that a window contained glass, somehow increased the risk of it being lost.

Please let me have your responses to the questions I've posed above

[stuscfc1883]

Hi BankFodder,

 

We produced 5 bespoke sized Sneeze Screens, 1x 1200mm x 700mm and 4x 1600mm x 700mm, the latter being the case in question.

They were packed into 4x Parcels, the parcel in question was containing 2x 1600mm x 700mm pieces of shaped 5mm Acrylic material and the 'feet' were in a separate box.

The Screens had been hit on the corner, the packaging was ripped off that corner and left the corner exposed, I have pics if required. 6x of the Feet were 'snapped off' again I have pics to help you see what the products are if you like.

 

[BankFodder]

I'd like to say that I come across sneeze screens every day of the week and that I find it condescending that you should even consider that I might need to be shown a picture of one – but that would be a lie.

 

Hands up here anyone who visits this thread who can honestly say that they have seen a sneeze screen?

[stuscfc1883]

Sorry lol . . . Sneeze Screens are the protective screens for retail or work environments, here's a pick of them . . .

[BankFodder]

Oh, do you mean the Perspex screen that people are putting up to protect themselves against Covid transmission?

I see that they were apparently damaged on the corners. The corners seem to be fairly sharp plastic/acrylic – maybe slightly rounded but not very much. I can imagine that the packaging must need special reinforcement/protection in order take any shocks received on the corners which must be quite vulnerable and also because they are effectively a point, the force of any shock is not distributed at the point of impact

[stuscfc1883]

yep spot on . . .

[BankFodder]

So I'm just looking at the business of proper packaging. Where the corners of your parcel quickly reinforced to deal with the "fragility" of the acrylic corners?