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Shipping Insurance Enquiry


doodle

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When selling to a buyer outside the UK, say in Ireland for example, does anyone have any recommendations of courier services that offer good insurance on the value of the instrument. I note that Parcelforce don't seem to want to give musical instruments any cover beyond their basic service (£50) and so an instrument of value - £5000 - seems hard to get covered. I guess that members do send instruments both for sale and repair away to different locations, do you generally just 'hope for the best' or who do you go to?

 

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Yes, this is certainly a problem and even if you can find insurance that is acceptable it is terribly expensive.

 

I have more or less given up now and retreated to the 'hope for the best' approach, paying careful attention to the packing. For sure a number of luthiers in the Concertina, Accordion, Melodeon and Hurdy Gurdy areas seem to do the same, as do many retailers in UK, France and Germany (e.g. Thomann). Quite scary really in view of the money often involved.

 

Over many years of domestic buying and selling our various instruments (more years and instruments than I care to admit to), mainly to and from Uk/Europe and once to Australia, (but never Canada or the States) we have been very lucky and without any incidents. In the main we have used ParcelHero / DPD but on occasions ParcelForce too.

 

On the other hand we have one friend who imported a beautiful new Frans 'Van der Aa' Melodeon at the time when Frans was making them in Colombia and it did suffer some serious cosmetic damage. (Van der Aa are now back in Holland I think).

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I have an interest in this topic too as I will soon need to ship an instrument overseas...

Maybe not viable for outside a continent, but have any of you considered the possibility that with cheap airfares and an instrument in carry-on, hand-delivery might be cheaper than insurance? Could then be negotiated whether the buyer or seller takes the trip... with maybe a day or two of holiday into to bargain (not to be included in the "shipping" price).

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I use Heritage Music Insurance (http://www.musicins.com/) for my instruments, but they only cover the instruments once I have them. However, I have been able to purchase specific riders from them (inexpensively) that specifically covered the instrument in transit (whether to me, or off and back for maintenance).

 

(I have fortunately never had to make a claim, I was pointed in their direction by a local luthier)

Edited by Dave Weinstein
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Alex, following a quick call, Lark insurance tell me they only insure shipping items if you already have an account as a policy holder with them. They seemed very helpful, however and maybe a good source for instrument insurance, but as I'm not with them, it didn't work out. So, I'm shipping with UPS, who do a declared valuation charge of 1% of the value + shipping fees up to a declared value of £5000. Hope this helps. Tony

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Alex, following a quick call, Lark insurance tell me they only insure shipping items if you already have an account as a policy holder with them. They seemed very helpful, however and maybe a good source for instrument insurance, but as I'm not with them, it didn't work out. So, I'm shipping with UPS, who do a declared valuation charge of 1% of the value + shipping fees up to a declared value of £5000. Hope this helps. Tony

UPS have a clause that worries me slightly: they say you are prohibited from shipping, "Articles of exceptional value (eg, works of art, antiques, precious stones, gold and silver)" but I couldn't find a clear definition of what that means. :unsure:

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