ParcelMonkey Woes! Lost £400 Monitor

moogle · 4 May 2012 at 18:56

busman said:
Have you any idea how much stuff is on a prohibited goods list? So you expect a man in a van to have all that to hand and then have the time to discuss it with a customer?

Would it not be easier for the person sending the parcel to spend the, I don't know, whole minute it would take to read the prohibited goods section on a website?

You think the man in the van runs the website that accepts parcel orders?

MrKeeno · 4 May 2012 at 18:57

What the same website with the section on prohibited goods?

moogle · 4 May 2012 at 19:02

busman said:
What the same website with the section on prohibited goods?

Which other site would it be?

I think you're getting the wrong end of the stick here.

The courier man doesn't have to check if it's prohibited or not, the courier company or 3rd party courier company accepting payment and insurance for something not covered should. Especially seeing as it's online and a lot of prohibited items could be weeded out or at least tell the sender/person booking it that they will not be covered (when they fill in the contents description box).

I agree it's the user who should read the T&C but it's sort of like the PPI insurance companies that blatantly accepted people who they knew wouldn't be eligible for cover.

MrKeeno · 4 May 2012 at 19:06

Yes but the contents box is just the same as the special instructions. Its not checked by the website, you could put in 'human head' and it wouldnt flag it up.

The only possible way to police it would be to have a drop down box, or predictive text box that only accepts what is not prohibited. Its a flawed system atm.

The Halk · 4 May 2012 at 19:10

moogle said:
Which other site would it be?

I think you're getting the wrong end of the stick here.

The courier man doesn't have to check if it's prohibited or not, the courier company or 3rd party courier company accepting payment and insurance for something not covered should. Especially seeing as it's online and a lot of prohibited items could be weeded out or at least tell the sender/person booking it that they will not be covered (when they fill in the contents description box).

I agree it's the user who should read the T&C but it's sort of like the PPI insurance companies that blatantly accepted people who they knew wouldn't be eligible for cover.

It's far worse than PPI. PPI excluded people with no income, or self employed, fixed contract, existing medical conditions.

This is quite worse, it's quite literally true that the Terms and Conditions exclude everything. They might as well put "P.s. this policy will never pay out" in the T&C. That's an unfair contract term.

moogle · 4 May 2012 at 19:19

busman said:
Yes but the contents box is just the same as the special instructions. Its not checked by the website, you could put in 'human head' and it wouldnt flag it up.

The only possible way to police it would be to have a drop down box, or predictive text box that only accepts what is not prohibited. Its a flawed system atm.

So you don't object to my post then? As that is all I was saying, that ParcelMonkey or any other courier service 'reseller' could easily verify the descriptions field like they do with email, phone, and address fields.

A simple regex check of the prohibited items (anything with monitor in the descriptions could be flagged up for example) would be fairly simple for them to implement.

The Halk said:
It's far worse than PPI. PPI excluded people with no income, or self employed, fixed contract, existing medical conditions.

This is quite worse, it's quite literally true that the Terms and Conditions exclude everything. They might as well put "P.s. this policy will never pay out" in the T&C. That's an unfair contract term.

Ahh well I only knew about that part of PPI, this item list is really vague it covers almost everything that you'd think of sending with a courier.

MrKeeno · 4 May 2012 at 20:52

Dont object at all mate, i get what your saying and tbh they are leaving themselves open by not having this in place. It could get complicated though with different sizes of screens being accepted and so on.

You can also bet that in the T&C's there will be a clause stating that anything that they have missed in the description field & is under the restricted items list will still not be covered

mmj_uk · 4 May 2012 at 22:11

Craterloads did you get a City Link tracking code? if not ask Parcel Monkeys to give it to you and enquire about the consignment with City Link.

I suspect the item was never actually sent to the intended recipient so Parcel Monkeys won't be able to produce a legit one?

flexo786 · 4 May 2012 at 22:58

im sure all these 3rd party courier companies have similar t&c so its not something thats just only done by parcel monkey. have also read of it happening to people with parcel2go

Craterloads · 4 May 2012 at 23:31

mmj_uk said:
Craterloads did you get a City Link tracking code? if not ask Parcel Monkeys to give it to you and enquire about the consignment with City Link.

I suspect the item was never actually sent to the intended recipient so Parcel Monkeys won't be able to produce a legit one?

Tracking number is: LY162954

Just checked it again and says its been scanned on the 20th, which it didnt show at all till today! Was just showing the first two lines.

Cleeecooo · 4 May 2012 at 23:33

So how exactly can a consumer send a 27" monitor fully insured up to £800ish?

It seems that only businesses can do this without paying something like £50 for postage.

atpbx · 4 May 2012 at 23:36

busman said:
Have you any idea how much stuff is on a prohibited goods list? So you expect a man in a van to have all that to hand and then have the time to discuss it with a customer?

Would it not be easier for the person sending the parcel to spend the, I don't know, whole minute it would take to read the prohibited goods section on a website?

That's his job unfortunately.

Why does the fact the bloke drives a van render him mentally sub normal in some people's eyes?
His job is to know these things, they don't just get a van and write 90 "we called you were out **** you "cards and post them through random peoples letter boxes.

C.R.A.Z.Y · 4 May 2012 at 23:38

I can't beleive all the people with the smug stinking attitude here of 'tuff, should have read the t&c' :rolleyes:

It's perfectly logical and reasonable for them to exclude certain 'fragile' items from the compensation cover (Some peoples idea of protective packaging is woeful at best!)
This would then give customers the choice of packaging their parcels in such a way that you could literally drop kick it without causing any damage and taking a slight gamble with no insurance or paying them a premium to insure it in transit.

However it's illogical and totally unreasonable to exclude certain items from compensation with regards to lost packages as the identity of the product bears no connection what-so-ever with whether its lost or not, for this very reason I strongly believe they are on VERY dodgy legal grounds. (Companies can put what-ever they like in their T&C's, it doesn't make it legally binding!! )
Stick it too them I say, they're trying to mug you off!
Good luck fella

TeRmIn8r · 4 May 2012 at 23:49

I think it's an absolute joke... Selling you an insurance product that you would never be able to claim on. Smells like PPI.

Energize · 5 May 2012 at 00:09

Could take them to court? It's not a reasonable contract term, it doesn't matter what type of item it is, we aren't talking damage here we're talking loss, no different to losing an amplifier or any other electronic item.

233 · 5 May 2012 at 00:18

pretty shocking that parcel monkey can sell you insurance then say its not valid as the item was on the prohibited list, i could understand if it was damaged but they lost the bleeding thing,

sound like a right shower of cowboys tbh

turbo · 5 May 2012 at 00:23

Craterloads said:
Well I’m going to post the letter tomorrow kindly written by Daniel and Halk. If i do not get a reply within two weeks, will report it to the police.

Also thinking of posting my experience on every popular forum i can access, leave reviews on every review site and email bunch news/internet sites, and then send parcelmonkey links to these.

Also emailed Dom from that rip-off show on BBC!

Whilst I do feel for your situation I cannot get past the part where you read the T&C's saw that Monitors were excluded from compensation yet still went ahead with using them?

Its all very well and good saying 'they still accepted my order' but what sort of programming do you think they have running on the site? It would be nice if it picked up keywords and that in itself would not allow you to proceed with the delivery procedure but they get around this by making the list of prohibited items easy to find and clear in there definitions.

Where therefore is the justification for you thinking you deserve compensation considering they have told you what you what you are signing up for and you have ticked the acceptance box?

This is purely an example and dont obviously think it would get this far but If this went to court surely this acceptance of there T&C's would leave you with NOTHING to defend yourself with or attack them with?

Energize · 5 May 2012 at 00:33

turbo said:
This is purely an example and dont obviously think it would get this far but If this went to court surely this acceptance of there T&C's would leave you with NOTHING to defend yourself with or attack them with?

No, the laws about unfair contract terms are quite substantial. If a judge considers the contract to be unfair then it doesn't matter if he agreed to the terms and conditions. Otherwise companies could get away with anything, as they are clearly trying to do here.

If sending a monitor in the future, I would lie about the contents so in the event it goes "missing" you can claim compensation.

Threepwood · 5 May 2012 at 00:40

Whilst I do feel for your situation I cannot get past the part where you read the T&C's saw that Monitors were excluded from compensation yet still went ahead with using them?

Can you get over the fact that T's&C's don't affect ones statutory rights?

Nitefly · 5 May 2012 at 01:00

[TW]Fox;21832785 said:
There is nothing you can do, its in the T&C's.

Errr, no?

It's certainly not 100% tight, but you could allege that exclusion clause is unfair. At face value, it seems that clause 4 taken as a whole is ridiculous, especially 4.3 which it states is 'non-exhaustive'. It excludes just about everything that you would practically want to use the service for. Accordingly, you can allege that the clause is unfair under s.3 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 as in effect it gives total exclusion for practically any loss.

3.-(l) This section applies as between contracting parties
where one of them deals as consumer or on the other's written
standard terms of business.

(2) As against that party, the other cannot by reference to any
contract term-

(a) when himself in breach of contract, exclude or restrict
any liability of his in respect of the breach ;

...

except in so far as (in any of the cases mentioned above in this
subsection) the contract term satisfies the requirement of
reasonableness.

There are counter arguments here with severance and debatable reasonableness test in Schedule 2 of the Act, but in absence of anything else to go on this is definitely worth a punt. You can threaten them with legal action and the possibility of their exclusion clause being held to be invalid (plus legal fees) may scare them into compensating you in full.

I'm actually pretty surprised that nobody else in this thread has brought this up.