Shipping and Secursus Insurance - A positive experience

pt22

Hi.

I wanted to post my recent experience with Secursus parcel insurance here. Maybe it's just me, but I've found it a bit stressful to buy/sell guitars here when you consider the difficulty or costs of shipping and properly insuring expensive instruments. I've used fully insured couriers in the past at significant expense, but most of the more retail-based carriers have much more reasonable pricing but don't seem to cover damage to instruments.

I bought a 1977 Ibanez archtop from @RevMatt on here last week. Being a good guy he packaged the guitar properly, in a hard case and double boxed with proper soft padding. Unfortunately Parcelforce must have dropped it as the guitar arrived with the fretboard coming away from the neck and binding from the nut down to frets 3 or 4. 

Look, it's a 40+ year old guitar and glue eventually lets go so I'm not going to kill Parcelforce here, especially not for £15 for the postage fees. Thankfully I had taken out insurance on the parcel with Secursus, who within a week had reviewed the submitted information and paid the @FelineGuitars repair invoice without any fuss. I will say they did ask for a Trustpilot review as they are trying to establish themselves, but they paid the claim before asking me for a review. My post here in on my own accord and is searchable content for those looking for this type of service.

Bonus points to Secursus for not hassling me as I made one critical mistake... the shipper is supposed to be taking out the insurance, not the receiver. I didn't realize this, and I could see that being grounds for denial. Thankfully it wasn't an issue, and I'll be dropping off the guitar for some love with Jonathan in the next few weeks. 

So a positive experience with an insurance company. A rare experience in this day and age?

Bennyboy-UK

Fantastic result, and massively valuable review!

I have used Secursus maybe 20+ times over the last 4 years or so for international and domestic shipping insurance for guitars coming and going, so far without needing to make a claim.

Thank you very much for writing this up!

grungebob

Yeah it’s good to hear they paid out without fuss. 

I thought I read somewhere (possibly on here) that they don’t cover secondhand items sold online like eBay? If true that would make them pretty pointless. 

webrthomson

Nice review, good to know they stand behind their service too as I've also used them a fair few times but so far not needed to claim!

No doubt your new (old) guitar will come back from Feline as good as new!

roberty

grungebob said:

Yeah it’s good to hear they paid out without fuss. 

I thought I read somewhere (possibly on here) that they don’t cover secondhand items sold online like eBay? If true that would make them pretty pointless. 

I think they were no longer covering anything sent via eBay distribution centre. Ship privately and it should be fine. At least I hope so, because I use them a lot lol

Gizmo

I used them quite a bit a few years back when i was selling off my uncles guitars after he had a stroke,but i stopped using them after this T&C update popped up

"ITEMS SHIPPED THAT ARE SOLD/PURCHASED ON AN ONLINE MARKETPLACE BY INDIVIDUALS. ONLY OFFICIAL BUSINESSES WILL BE COVERED UNLESS APPROVED IN WRITING."

Also i read (on here i think) that items now need to be shipped in "new" boxes & that items need to be inspected & issues/damge noted before the delivery driver leaves your door (LOL) ....So as i told them via a reply to their some what beggy "why have you stopped using us" email that they'ed T&C themself's out of my bussiness...sorry to hear PF damahed the guitar and nice to hear you got a claim paid out on.

Boromedic

Secursus confirmed to me that they cover forum sales, the addition of the terms above are for eBay and Reverb for example.

RevMatt

I've pretty much got to the point where I now won't ship guitars, although mainly because of a recent bad experience with an eBay buyer who lied about the guitar in order to return it. But the confidence in a decent insurer is really useful and I may return to offering postage on eBay items based on Pete's experience.

As an aside, @pt22 was a pleasure to deal with and consistently patient and polite throughout the whole experience.