FedEx lost important boxes

kingmetal

My girlfriend is moving to Seattle, so she packed up all her important belongings into 7 boxes and shipped them to a friend in Seattle. 5 of them showed up. She's in Europe right now so I'm sort of in charge of handling most of this.

Here are the facts:

1. FedEx cannot find the boxes
2. They did not get delivered
3. She did not declare value on them
4. This is a big deal

FedEx has basically given up after running a trace and they have told me, essentially "your boxes are gone. file a claim. kthnxbye!"

I realize this is a shot in the dark, but she's freaking out and won't be back in the states for another month. Does anyone have any experience with this at all? Is there some kind of secret way to at least get a reasonable amount of money even though we didn't declare value?

We're not sure what's in the boxes that are missing, but we've deduced that a couple 'worst case scenario items' actually probably are now missing. I realize that I probably should have stopped her from shipping things like this through FedEx, but it was a crazy week and I just didn't put enough thought into it. Not declaring was a huge mistake, but she waited till the last possible second to get it all done so it wasn't really an option. This is a fucking mess and I'm now in the middle of it.

The current plan is to wait until she gets back from Europe and then file a claim. We can file a claim within 9 months from now, so we have plenty of time, we just won't have a clue what's gone until we can see the boxes and what's inside them.

I just want to make this better.

Delzhand

If you didn't declare a value, you should know that they insure packages automatically for up to $100. You can try putting in a claim for 99.95 or whatever, and that's probably your best bet if they can't find them.

MichaelLC

Where did she ship them from?

Did they pick up at her house, or did she go to a FedEx/Kinkos? If she went to a store, do the stores have any polices beyond the standard FedEx?

What about her credit card? Maybe something along the lines of "failed to receive goods/services" from FedEx?

kingmetal

MichaelLC wrote: »

Where did she ship them from?

Did they pick up at her house, or did she go to a FedEx/Kinkos? If she went to a store, do the stores have any polices beyond the standard FedEx?

What about her credit card? Maybe something along the lines of "failed to receive goods/services" from FedEx?

The shipping cost isn't really an issue, since I'm sure we can get that comped (we're very persuasive people, her an I).

We shipped out of a FedEx/Kinkos, but the policies seem to be the same as near as I can figure. I will investigate this further.

It's as good a lead as any and I'm pretty desperate at this point.

Cycophant

You're probably screwed, more or less. Your best hope at this point is to simply see if you can get them to cover anything beyond the automatic $100 value for lost shipments, and go from there. Most shipping companies have to deal with this kind of thing all the time, and are usually pretty strict about giving out more money than they have to, especially if there was no declared value. But it's worth a shot.

You can try harassing them to keep looking, but even if they agreed, the odds of anything actually happening is pretty slim. Sometimes (but don't get your hopes up), packages will just randomly find their way back into the shipping system (sometimes they "fall off the line" somewhere along the way, then 3 weeks later someone notices it and puts it back in the system) and some day in the future they'll arrive. It happens occasionally, but obviously there's nothing you can do about it, and it's not worth getting your hopes up over.

misbehavin

I'm sorry, but there isn't much you can do except bitch and moan and hope for the best. You likely will only end up with the standard $100.

In the future, always declare a value. Always and without exception.

Thanatos

Yeah, she really screwed herself by not declaring a value. You'll end up with $100 plus shipping costs per box.