When you receive your shipment and you discover concealed damage, meaning damage that isn’t clearly visible until you unbox or unpack your shipment, time is of the essence to file your damage claim to the trucking company. This is why I always stress to people that whomever is taking receipt of the shipment must be thorough with inspecting the delivery from the truck driver. They may catch damage while the truck driver is still there and note it on the delivery receipt or they can outright refuse delivery if it arrives in unacceptable condition. Basically, don’t let someone that doesn’t care or who’s in a rush take receipt of your shipment this responsibility. However, there will be times that your shipment looks to be in pristine condition from the outside, but upon unpacking the item, you discover that the item is not in the same condition as when it was initially shipped out to you. Somehwhere along the way, your shipment was battered, bent, dropped, shattered and broken.
Hopefully, as I stated before, you had someone thorough take receipt of the shipment because inspection does not end there. I highly stress that the preson that took receipt of the shipment immidiately unpacks the item and doesn’t just leave it in the corner for someone else to take care of at a later date. If concealed damage is discovered after the driver has left and the unit has already been signed for without listing visible damage on the delivery receipt, you have 14 days to file your claim. But here is the important part:
DON’T WAIT 14 DAYS TO FILE YOUR CLAIM. DON’T EVEN WAIT 2 OR 3 DAYS! FILE YOUR CLAIM IMMEDIATELY!
You should find out the phone number of the terminal that dispatched the truck driver that delivered the shipment to you. Speak with the terminal manager there and be clear that you are officially requesting for a freight insection because of concealed damage to your shipment. Certainly, you can call the freight broker or sales agent that helped you with your order initially. Personally, I like to take matters into my own hands and call directly because I know that it’s one less person to pass the information along to and I know it got done. Get all the information from the person you speak with, phone numbers, e-mails and their name. Follow up with an e-mail and phone call to whomever you were told to contact Copy the email to anyone else involved. Make sure to find out when they will send an inspector out to assess the freight damage or when you will be contacted to set up the inspection.
Here’s the good part, the inspector is a third party contractor so they should give an unbiased assessment of the freight damage. And it’s of no cost to you.
If you don’t follow setting up the appointment of having the inspector out to view the damage to your product and it doesn’t happen, you might as well just hand over all your money to the trucking company. They follow strict procedures and are will throw out your claim if you didn’t follow their procedure. They don’t have time to hear your sob story if you didn’t dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
To their defense, the trucking companies aren’t necessarrily trying to screw you over, they have set up these procedures to protect themselves from fraudulent freight claims that happen all the time. So be smart, protect yourself and take charge of the situation from day one! If you don’t, don’t tell me I didn’t tell you so.
So now you have a little insight as to what you need to do in a worst case scenario situation in order to protect yourself. Again, begin the claim process ASAP!
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