insurance and shipping with UPS

I need to state here that even though I found one of spin4cards points to be of some relevance I cannot condone his actions or attitude here at all.
Please read and digest this thread for some guidelines...

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/polite-rules-for-discussing-audio-related-things

@hifiman5 .
Even though I refuse to ship UPS, I still get a lot of delivery from them and our driver is a very nice chap indeed, too nice imho for the job he is obviously suffering with.
Just last week he told me that their day is only done when every parcel is delivered( if possible) and pickup made. Does not matter if this takes 5 or 12 hours.
Now obviously they know their route and the areas and a quick look at his delivery manifest will tell him whether its a casual day or a bat out of hell day.
Therein lies part of your answer I believe.

I have to admit to thinking along the same lines.
When you ship ANY item with ANY carrier you are entering into a 2 way contract.
You pay them for a service, which is to deliver your goods in a timely manner and undamaged.
The idea that you should have to pay extra ( over what they just quoted you for said service) to insure this happens is nonsense in reality.
You have agreed a service between two parties, your end is packing it really well yourself and paying the carrier, their end is delivering it to the correct address undamaged. Really boils down to that.
Now if you knowingly make a crabby job of packing well you know who to blame, look in the mirror.
If you made a great job and all sellers with any integrity really should and it gets there damaged then that’s on the carrier.
Yes there should be an agreed value for liability and yes this may make your shipping cost more but to call it insurance is incorrect.
And once you have agreed that value and paid extra that should be it. Not " we will give you 75% of value", that is absurd!

And yes I realise this may incense some here and ruffle some feathers...oh well.

Well this WAS a fairly interesting thread now rocketing down the tubes at a high rate of knots!

Talking of UPS, I am waiting for an amp to be delivered which unfortunately the seller insisted on using a local UPS store to pack and ship as they do not have oem packing for it.
This is travelling from Cali to Florida so we will see how it fares, I hope for the best but I will be covered one way or another.
Hope it does not turn into the same mess as the OP post though.

Here is my somewhat jaundiced view of shipping in the USA from the last 20 years.

Small items up to about 2-3lb weight I find the USPS is very good and fairy priced, tbh in all this time they have never damaged anything and only lost one item.

Medium weight items up to abut 15lb is pretty much a wash cost wise between USPS,UPS and Fedex. Again USPS have been good, Fedex have been good and the only times I tried UPS resulted in damage or seriously delayed delivery!

Heavy items over 30lb it is no contest , Fedex are usually far and away cheaper. Their service is faster than UPS, usually by at least a day on say coast to coast . They have not damaged anything as of yet or lost anything. UPS I have already detailed one of their train wrecks which was not the only one.
In my area at least Fedex also delivers normal ground on a Saturday without having to pay extra for this, UPS do not.

saying all of that I do use UPS a lot...….for next day air letters, this they have been very good at for 20 years never losing one or damaging one, I suspect a completely different department. 

While I agree with some of the comments here regarding going nuclear on the packaging somebody has to pay for it.
In todays market try asking the buyer to pay an extra $150 to help protect his purchase, they are just going to move right along 99% of the time.
So now the seller has to stump up and this cuts into an already greatly reduced baseline due to the terrible selling conditions in the market right now. Lets face it about the only way anything is selling is on price period, does not really matter what it is.
Yes what cost to protect the goods being shipped is the moral story here and again agreed on principle.
But when it boils down to a deal where you are likely already bleeding money it may just not be financially viable.

I keep all boxing from items I buy but unfortunately when you buy used the item you buy may not have its original box any longer and so gets shipped in a different box.
In that case then no you do not have the original packaging to use when /or you decide to sell.

Unfortunately for the glass fronted mac units present rapidly deteriorating road conditions are not helping. They are VERY prone to vibration and jarring. Even if they have not been mishandled on purpose the sheer rigours of modern day ground transport can take one out.
I have had two arrive to me with shattered glass with no obvious signs of abuse to the boxing at all.

I have found over the years that FedEx appear to have a much better track record with goods to and from my house and their customer service has been more friendly than ups. As a bonus at least in my area FedEx ground deliver on Sat as well whereas ups do not.

I ship all of my items either FedEx or good old USPS only. Ups do not even get quoted.

I disagree with NOT labeling as fragile etc for the simple fact I am sure it helped me save my money in my aforementioned post.
Yes some monkeys will see it as an enticement to try to damage but that is today's pathetic work ethic at play.
As far as at least giving you some credibility to say you tried to ask them to take care I think it outweighs the concerns.
Just my opinion.....

Unfortunately I have also learned the hard way that UPS, when it comes to claims for damages are not to be trusted in any way whatsoever and will actually tamper with evidence and alter the facts to avoid paying out in any way they can.
Heady claims you say, I agree but it happened to me too.
I shipped a pair of speakers from Florida to Arizona in the original speaker boxes but then also inside a pair of heavy duty bought from the UPS store golf club boxes ( these are great cheap options for shipping speakers if you do not have boxes btw!).
Now I plastered these boxes with signs I printed out and taped on along the lines of , FRAGILE, DO NOT BEND, ELECTRONICS, THIS WAY UP etc.
Now my local UPS driver is a very nice guy and when he came to pick these up from my house I asked if I could take a picture of them loaded in his truck standing up with all the packaging labels showing which he had no problem with at all.
Needless to say they arrived at the buyers looking like they had been run over by an 18 wheeler and both speakers completely wasted.Buyer sent me lots of photos and what was very interesting was that ALL of my labels were gone from both boxes, every single one.
dealing with ups claims the lady tried to insist they were not in speaker boxes despite the original speaker boxes and packaging were INSIDE the ups golf club boxes and there was NO indication of goods or fragility, seriously. I demanded to speak to a supervisor who I eventually got after 30 minutes wait and we went through it all again, at this juncture I asked for her email so I could send her the pictures of these speakers loaded onto the ups truck at my house. She asked why and as soon as I said that they showed the boxes covered with warning labels and that after destroying the boxes in transit a ups employee must have removed all labels and tried to cover their backsides she agreed to receive the pictures.
To her credit she called me back in 10 minutes, apologised and said ups will cover the full cost of the speakers insured value and refund the shipping charges.
Trust them no further than you can throw them! Get all the evidence you can, I take pictures of all my major items shipping and have done for years.