Damaged, lost, delayed parcels
3 mins
It’s inevitable that some parcels get lost or damaged once in a while during the delivery process. Normally when this happens, you’d file a support ticket with the shipping carrier and hope for the best.
But if you shipped your parcel with Sendcloud’s transactional rates—rather than through your own carrier contract—you can file this ticket directly in Sendcloud. This way, all your investigations will be accessible in one place, and they’ll all follow a standardized process.
Plus, if the carrier confirms that they’re the ones at fault, we’ll send you the money right away and then follow up with the carriers ourselves.
So let’s take a look at the whole process for reporting damaged and lost parcels, step by step.
If you want to have your issue handled as soon as possible, file the ticket via the form in Sendcloud app. This will be faster than calling our customer support. This way, we’ll have all the required information at the ready, and we’ll send it on to the carrier immediately.
To get started, go straight to the support section, or—even easier—find your parcel in the Shipped tab and open it there. Here, on the right hand side, you’ll see the Customer Service drop down. There, choose the problem you’d like to start an investigation for and you’ll be redirected to our Support section, with all your parcel information prefilled in advance. Click “Find my shipment” and a form will show up below. Now provide all the required information and you’re done with the first step!
Depending on the carrier, it generally takes 5 to 30 days to complete the investigation, and unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do on our side to speed up that process. During this time you’ll receive automatic updates regarding the status of your case.
Now, after this point, there are a couple of possible courses of action.
First, let’s consider the scenarios where your parcel isn’t insured with Sendcloud insurance. If the carrier investigation turns out negative—meaning they didn’t confirm that they mishandled your parcel—then the case is closed, you won’t be reimbursed, and there’s nothing more you can do.
On the other hand, if the carrier investigation had a positive outcome—that is, they admitted they were at fault in handling your parcel—Sendcloud will reimburse you. In general, this takes up to 7 days. You won’t need to file any additional claims or paperwork here—your case will be automatically processed as part of your original ticket.
The amount you’ll receive will depend on the shipping method your parcel was shipped with. If the shipping method included insurance, you’ll receive the lower of these two values: the insurance value or the cost at which you acquired shipped goods in the first place.
However, if the shipping method wasn’t insured by the carrier, you’ll receive reimbursement based on the parcel weight.
Now it’s time to see what happens when your parcel is insured with Sendcloud Insurance. Here, no matter what the carrier investigation outcome is, you can always file the Sendcloud Insurance claim. Then, if the carrier investigation turns out positive, you’ll again receive the lower of the two values: the insurance value or the cost at which you acquired shipped goods in the first place. But if the carrier investigation has turned out negative, the insurance company will still review your documents one more time, so you have one more chance to get reimbursed in the end.
For more information on Sendcloud Insurance, visit our Help Center.
