Yep. I'm trying not to implode about this situation.
Fluffy, Who do you submit insurance claims to? Can you direct us to documentation regarding their policy please?
From a U.S. perspective, the package is tracking as "USPS Priority Mail International".
Per the USPS Priority mail international FAQ, an insurance claim can be filed "no sooner than" 7 days. This means one could be filed right now. I understand what you've been told regarding boat shipping and what you've told us. However, if we can take advantage of this process through USPS, it does not logically make sense to wait.
https://www.usps.com/ship/file-international-claims.htm#If your claim is filed through SAPO, then I'm a little concerned by their claim policy.
http://www.postoffice.co.za/Insuranceact.pdfIt states "The insured must lodge a claim within 45 days after dispatching the insured letter/parcel."
Edit: I understand you have been in discussion with SAPO, but has a formal claim been submitted?
Additionally, what boat was our shipment placed on? This question should be resolved by now. We have more than doubled the original 21 day transit time originally quoted for intercontinental vessel transport.
Neither, for three reasons:
1. Cover from the postal service is very limited, often not covering missing parts or damage, and only whole loss
2. They are expensive - at their rates it would be cheaper for us to self-insure, because practically speaking there is such a small number of international shipments that truly go missing
3. We have had issues with customs where we declare "No Commercial Value" but we insure it for several hundred Dollars...customs doesn't understand the disconnect. The customer even tried to explain that if you send a family heirloom to a family member you would insure it, but it wouldn't have a commercial value, and the US customs guy was just like "errrrr".
So our insurance company that does all of our normal insurance as well as our business continuity insurance is just covering it under an adjusted marine insurance policy, which is cheaper than the post office's. There aren't any lower or upper bounds on claims in terms of time, per se, but obviously they won't even consider a surface mail claim if it's within the post office's published timelines. At the very least they would discuss it with the post office who would kick back the 3 month timeline, and they wouldn't budge until then.
I have requested routing info several times from the post office to no avail. The closest I got was estimated routing info for a delivery to Fremont, CA, 94538. Basically, excluding customs processing on either side: there are weekly sailings to Newark, so the parcel may hang around for a week; then to Newark is approximately 25 days; then it sits in Newark for up to a month waiting for the monthly vessel to San Francisco, then it takes approximately 14 days from Newark to San Francisco. Customs is pre-cleared here, but let's add another 2 days on the receiving end for customs and another, say, 3 days for final delivery to Fremont? That means best case scenario assuming no waiting at any port is 6.5 weeks. Worst case scenario with full waiting times at both ports is 11.6 weeks. This is obviously not necessarily your route, but who knows - maybe all surface mail parcels are routed through San Francisco? Seems kinda redundant since Newark is in the US already, but clearly postal routing defies all normal logic.
