Why is insurance on a delivery if the item you are sending is more than £20 so exorbitant? Over the last few weeks I have sent some pretty expensive items, either items I have sold or RMA'ed and noted that the insurance is bloody expensive for a one off journey. A £850 PC was around £60 with Royal Mail but jumped to nearly £100 with virtually every other carrier. Yodel, DPD, Hermes ETC ETC if done via Parcel2Go or Parcel Monkey. I RMA'ed a Zotac 1080 sent via Parcel Force and again the insurance quote was ridiculous. Is it that the ordinary sender is paying the price for the good deals the major Etailers will have got for themselves as I would imagine they are not paying anything like the premiums we are paying? What makes it worse is if you do have a claim it can be like getting blood from a stone for the companies top pay up. What is amusing is those of on the Market Place who, to try and keep the costs down, on what they have already bought at a bargain price, by saying send the item snail mail as if that really makes any real difference these days to the cost of delivery if you make sure the item is covered to it's value.
I would guess its as simple as it's expensive as they have to pay out a lot. They hire the the cheapest delivery drivers possible so I would imagine there's a few bad apples in there that actively steal stuff, and many more who either don't care or are too over worked to take the necessary care to ensure stuff doesn't get damaged. Plus there always the possibility of fraud from the sender/ recipient. Its not difficult to think of ways of sending already damaged stuff to yourself or a friend and then claiming they damaged it or it never arrived.
As an ex delivery driver I had nothing but the utmost respect for the goods I was delivering and I found this to be true of my workmates. I think where most damage occurs is in the sorting offices where there is very little personal relationship to the items or to the people awaiting same. That said I had a smashed box delivered with paint dripping from it and the driver asked for a signature.
