At out set my heart goes out to the person who lost demantoids. Even
money will not make up the loss in terms of the rarity of the
stones.
I think I will not be out of place to put in my two cents.
First of all our company has been used all the carriers like Fed ex,
UPS, USPS, local messenger service to ferry our precious gemstones
in my experience of 16years.
If I graded the companies in terms of theft (in the order of least
to most)
a) Local Messenger (no loss at all or mis-delivery)
b) USPS (with no loss: mis-delivery but recovered both incoming and
outgoings),
c) Fed ex ( One package incoming and four package out going*)
d) U.P.S. If I said virtually every package was lost it would be no
exaggeration (also three or fourpilferation)
Now we send all our packages FedEx exclusively.
One particular incident stands outlike a sore thumb and that was
the only experience.
I packed twocultured pearl (Akoya) necklaces 8.5-9mm, 9-9.5mm AAA
quality right in the presence and plain sight of thecourier andI
learnt later the package never made it to the truck parked right
under our building althoughit was scanned picked up from our
office.
Pursuantto my complaints to Mr. Fredrick Smiths office directly
(after lots rep gave tenthousand wrong the courier was
fired (after it was established) then they decided on two people to
go and pick package (one of them would be security officer) etc.
But my plea to make me a party to the police complaint fell on deaf
ears as well as the insured amount (the $ 500declared value
clause). The fed ex put in more effective measures and made the
shipping more secure ( We did not loose a package after that).
But there were several things I did not know then that I could filed
a Small claim, or police complaint.
So thank you each and every participant putting inyour experience.
Thank you
Anil