subject: Should I Get Insurance For My Courier Shipment [print this page] When you're shipping something with a courier company, one of your primary concerns should always be that your assets are protected. However, unless you're familiar with the insurance policies that your San Diego delivery service has in place, you're not going to know whether or not you have to take extra action independently to make sure that is in fact the case.
Assuming that you are always going to have to get insurance for every courier shipment that you send may be a bit premature. However, it is also going to be imprudent to assume that everything that you ship is simply going to be adequately insured without doing any investigation on your own. Some people are worried that couriers aren't going to want to talk about the details of their insurance, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Courier companies are always eager to fully disclose exactly what kind of insurance they are carrying on their shipments, as this is both in their best interests, and in the best interests of their customers.
There are certain laws which govern the carrying of insurance by legal courier companies. This means that they are always going to have some kind of coverage on the goods that they are transporting for you. The time that there becomes some ambiguity in terms of insurance is when the value of the goods that you are shipping is worth more than the maximum coverage the courier has in place.
The number that you want to ask the courier about is something called the maximum declared value. This is the most that they allow someone to state on an insurance form that their package is worth for insurance purposes, meaning that is the most that they would be able to claim should the package become damaged. Once you know this number, you can see how great of a disparity there is between it and the actual value of your shipment.
If that disparity is too great, it may be up to you to purchase some additional insurance for your package. This is of course a decision that every company has to make on their own but there are many ways to get affordable additional insurance on a courier shipment. The two best ways are to either ask the courier if they can sell you additional insurance through their carrier, or to see if your current insurance agent for other insurance needs can provide you a good rate.
by: Scott P Gallagher
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