What is the value of Classe P401 ?

Absolute worse nightmare.  I am so sorry, I feel your pain and loss.  Now you have to deal with idiots that want to mess with you.  You knew the value and that's why you insured for what you did.  You are dealing with bereavement and loss and they are throwing this crap.   

Classe is still in business.  Tell them your situation and see if they can help.  Just the parts alone in that thing have to be $1,000's.  Let them know you won't be able to purchase a replacement until you get this resolved.  Or, can they repair?  Their repair estimate might be higher than a new one. 

The issue is also this.  You aren't going to be able to replace that amp without spending lots and lots of time waiting for one to come up on the market.  I collect the old stuff and it can take years to find exactly what you want.  How much is your time worth? 

Ask them to either produce a replacement that works or send you the money.  Your loss is worth much more than that, especially in this community.  There is a CA-300, used for sale on Audiogon for $3k.  Perhaps they can use the CA-300 as a reference price to justify your settlement, establishing that this is the model down from yours?? 

Good luck, so sorry about your loss. 

Huh... I did not know that there is a separate insurance, the shipping cost depended on the value I declared, so my guess was that it was the insurance that was costing more. The agent never asked me if I want to insure my package. So I know for sure I did not insure if that was separate from the additional cost that I paid to ship.
I told the claim agent that for $3 we cant even buy a original brochure for this unit :-)And yes, you are absolutely right, they are responsible, they packed it and they shipped it. And yes, just the capacitors and transformer will cost 1000s. I have asked the claim agent if they can infer the cost of P-401 from other amplifier made by Classe. Common sense tells us that one should at least be able to establish a minimum value of a 400W amplifier by just multiplying the cost of 300w/ch amp by 1.33, specially when specs are identical. In reality, going from 300W to 400W is quite a challenge and the cost could be even a larger factor than 1.33. But it is also noteworthy, that CA-301 is for 3K which translates to 4K for P-401, and this is identical to the cost estimated from the chinese seller. Here is the listing for the exact item in Chinahttps://www.taobao.com/list/item/wap/561872232885.htmThe current currency conversion is 1 Chinese yuan is 15 US cents. So for them to disregard this information to me is solely based on their convenience. They could just purchase the unit from chinese seller and replace my unit. That would be one way to resolve this. And yes, my time's worth in dollars is a lot :-) I did get a Classe 2300 (and that was 5800 dollars for 300w/ch) to replace this unit because I knew this claim is going to drag on for some time. Classe does not even make a 400W/ch unit now.

The case is being escalated. I told the claim agent that common sense dictates that I would not ship a $3 item and pay close to $500 just in shipping costs. If this is not resolved then I will definitely go to small claims court, which I told the claims agent will not be good for anyone. Lets see what a judge thinks of $3 value :-) and all of their ill logical reasoning.

Classe support did help to take pictures and send me all the information needed to file a claim. The problem is to get a used value for P-401. They did send me a letter stating the original value but what the shipping company needs is used value, and thats why the information from CA-301 and chinese seller above is extremely helpful.
Oh that sucks that 3 of your shipments were damaged. Did you pack them yourself ? In my case, they packed the unit so they should have known better. Did you try small claims court ?

It seems that what is more important than the used value is the cost of repairing it. Have you made that distinction with the carrier?
I also have to ask if this is the first time you have shipped an item f value, because I find it hard to believe that you didn't think about insuring it as you said.
I hope that you're able to recoup something.

You have a very good point, the settlement should be based on the value of repair and not the used value. Because if I interpret what you are saying correctly, their responsibility would be to either get my unit back to the original state or replace it with an equivalent unit. But maybe they would consider this as a total loss. I am not sure how they are treating this. They do have the repair cost estimate from Classe.
Yes, this is the first time I am sending anything of such value using a carrier. I have learnt many lessons this time :-)