Message from the Claims Desk 3.1.16

stewartms • March 1, 2016

Good Morning Stewart Family

Happy Super Tuesday everyone. On this day the greatest number of states hold primary elections to help determine each party’s nomination to run for president. Today Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and our main office’s home state of Virginia will be voting for their candidates in the upcoming election. So before you hit the polls today, please ensure that we get our customer’s vote that they have received their items.

This week I would like to talk about the proper way to check off an inventory and it’s importance to the claims process. Checking off an inventory has typically been as simple as a check mark in a box, but now days with our claim savvy clientele check marks are not longer sufficient. In fact, if you deliver a shipment and the customer has placed a check mark in the box indicating that they have received the item, many carriers, as well as many branches of the military, will still compensate the customer for items that the customer claims as missing. The only way to protect yourselves and Stewart from paying out these claims is to ensure that the customer initials each inventory line item separately. (Please note that having the customer initial the top line and bottom line and then connecting them with a line is not sufficient enough and will still result in an expensive payout)

High value inventories are the most important to have this done on. Any items that are placed on the high value must be initialed upon receipt and if it is a packed  item then it must be unpacked and inspected as well. Believe it or not if a customer initials and signs the high value inventory it will prevent them from filing a claim on that item after delivery, as long as the damage or loss is not listed on the 1850.

So let’s ensure that each inventory line has the customer’s initials, is signed, and avoid expensive missing items altogether.

Cheers,

Robert Wright

Claims Manager

Stewart Moving and Storage – Jax

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