arkon

I’ve recently had a parcel go missing that I sent via Busfrieght, It’s taken a few weeks but today I’ve finally got the OK from them that they are willing to meet the whole claim. Great I thought, until I noticed the amount they were prepared to pay back is $50 less than the full amount. This is the Excess!!!! Firstly like a muppet I never read the small print and yes on re-reading the Busfrieght terms and conditions it does indeed state in the event of a loss you are to pay a $50 excess.

The reason for this post is to warn others about the excess which I think is a big load of bull. Surely I have some consumer rights in this don’t I? Any consumer layers out there?
Basically regardless of their policy, I bought a service for a price and they failed to deliver so why oh why should I end up $50 out of pocket? Just another f…ing day in paradise. Oh and to add insult to injury I now have to send them back a release form saying I agree to the amount and drop any rights to further claims, That ok cos it’s standard practice, What irks me is I have to put a ruddy stamp on the envelope to send it back to get my money.

Vanessa

In a nutshell If this was the UK you wouldn't have any rights if you agreed to the terms and conditions unless you tried to argue that they were unfair under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (1999 as far as I can remember). Wouldn't have thought the law was much different here with regard to basic contract law.

arkon

What I find hard to digest is that if this were a car accident and I was not at fault, yes I would have to pay my excess, but then I would claim the excess back from the person at fault's insurance. Anyway nuff said, I've learnt my lesson and won't use Busfrieght again. I was considering putting through a bulk of my mail order computer business through them as their rates were not too bad. Their loss....

Hutch

Maybe write a letter to someone in the firm in question, let them know what happened and mention the fact that you were considering using them for your mail order business, but had now reconsidered. Probably wouldn't do much good, but worth a punt maybe.

arkon

As much as I am one for writing letters to complain or get better service, I am unfortunately learning that here there is little point, It will just end up costing me another stamp. When I wrote the water board to ask them to sympathetically re look at my 600,000 liter water bill, there response was basically tough, once it enters your land you are responsible for it. So I would expect the same response this time, tough I should have read the small print. Without sounding too anti Australian as that isn’t my intent this time, Australia is tick box mad, if there isn’t a tick box on the forms for a specific situation then that situation can’t be catered for. One thing I learnt dearly from in a previous life that cost me about half a million pounds was that tick box forms abdicate responsibility and far from making people less prone to error actually increase the odds of a mistake going unnoticed as there wasn’t a tick box for it. Here they are so form mad and tick box mad they take no responsibility for anything, so if I was to write a nice letter explaining why I thought the $50 was unfair and the fact they had just lost a sizable account there would basically be no form or tick box for such an eventuality and so all that would happen is for me to become more frustrated than I am already.

There that wasn’t too anti Australian was it? More anti tickbox regardless of which countries think it’s the only way to carry on.

Hutch

Nope - and I was agreeing, hence my post. It'd piss me off to.

Sass73

So, your run of bad luck didn't start when you moved to Oz?

You have my sympathies. I can't believe how they could lose something. At least it was only one thing and you hadn't started to use them for everything. Would definitely piss me off though. Horrible learning experience.

arkon

It makes me now wonder just how covered I am when I send all my goods out by insured Australia Post. I'll have to check it out.

As for my bad luck in the UK, I had plenty of good luck to offset it so you can take some bad luck now and again. The example of the big wadge of money lost wasn't so much bad luck as bad judgement on my part for allowing a system to be implemented that was flawed. It did teach me a valuable lesson about humans and what happens when they only have tick boxes to control the quality of their work.

BadgeIsBack

Arkon, do aussie forms really have a lot of ticks? More so, perhaps than in the UK - although you don't necessarily contrast - I know you're desperately wanting to not be anti-Australian. It seems like you have done more qualitative analysis on the subject.

My experience is limited to DIMA forms which seem good...