Insuring a Slide In Transit

[Weg Ban]

I need to ship a slide (only) to a shop to have the custom sights modified slightly to accomodate my aging eyes. Any suggestions on how much insurance I ought to buy on the shipment? My thought was that it ought to be pretty high, since my GC wouldn't be much good without the slide (although I suppose my gun guy could buy and fit a new one).

[Sgt. Quincannon]

Find out from your smith or directly from Colt what a new slide would cost INSTALLED, and insure for that amount.

[4merFMF]

If it is going USPS, every $1 buys $100 of insurance. UPS is closer to $0.50 per $100. At that cost, I insured my slide for the replacement cost of the whole pistol, just for peace of mind.

[larry starling]

I agree I would insure it for what replacement cost would be for the whole pistol...

[Ric4509]

Go for 4MerFMF and larry starling's suggestion.

[Hawkmoon]

You are wasting your money trying to insure a slide for the cost of the part plus installation, or for the cost of an entire pistol. Postal insurance will pay only the cost of what gets lost in shipping. And you need a receipt to show the actual cost. They will not buy you a gun if they lose a slide, and if you take the pistol apart to ship a slide, they will not pay to have a new slide installed on the pistol.

[Pappy]

You are wasting your money trying to insure a slide for the cost of the part plus installation, or for the cost of an entire pistol. Postal insurance will pay only the cost of what gets lost in shipping. And you need a receipt to show the actual cost. They will not buy you a gun if they lose a slide, and if you take the pistol apart to ship a slide, they will not pay to have a new slide installed on the pistol.

Don't tell them it's a slide. What if you told USPS that they lost your $5000 Rolex? Surely one would have a receipt for that! As an example of course.
I suppose one would have to declare what the package contained while insuring. They may x-ray to confirm. I'm thinking fraud. Anyway there may be other ways to skin a cat...Pappy

[gottripletsNC]

I would a major part like a slide being sent UPS anyways. You get the wrong person to XRay the thing, see its a gun part, and they have a conipsion fit, and you might not get you slide back, regardless of what the law says. When you did get it back it would be so long that you'd be fed up with the whole mess. I's ship DHL, FedEx or UPS.

[Weg Ban]

I would a major part like a slide being sent UPS anyways. DHL, FedEx or UPS.

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm not a big fan of the USPS — they manage to lose a noticeable fraction of the stuff we mail out of our office and that is only information, not property.

I think I'll do UPS and the price of a refitted slide (my gun guy can give me a price for that).

Thanks, folks...

[clughog]

I shipped my XSE slide back to Colt for warranty work a few weeks ago using USPS Priority Mail and insured it for $250 at a cost of $8.45 total. Knew I was taking a chance but have not had any problems with priority mail. It got there just fine. Colt sent the replacement back UPS and they just left it on the front porch. I would much rather they had sent it back USPS!

[Hawkmoon]

UPS service gets worse almost daily. Their own rules say that the drivers are supposed to leave packages out of sight if there's nobody to receive them. The two or three drivers on my route over the past fifteen years or more were good about that. They'd go around the corner of the garage and leave packages on the breezeway, under a roof, out of sight, between the original garage and the one we had added on a number of years ago.

The new guy on the route? Usually he leaves things right on the front stoop, where they are clearly visible all the way to the street. I think he's psychic -- the only times he leaves packages on the breezeway is when the box is very heavy, and I'm in the house. At which point he invariably leaves it right against the storm door, so I can't open the door without destroying it. Then he drives on the lawn to turn around rather than back out to the street.

:butthead: :butthead: :butthead:

[gottripletsNC]

LOL, I ordered a HDD for my desktop, 500GB seagate SATA drive(aint cheap) I ordered it from Dell, everything I order from them is supposed to be delivered with a signature. I was at work, my wife at home all day with the kids. I called her that night to see if the package had arrived, she said no. I got home the next morning in the frogstrangler we were having. Frogstrangler is a Carolina rainstorm by the way. Anyways, I opened the front door out of curiosity, and there sat a very wet cardboard box that fell apart when I tried to pick it up and opened it to find a soaking wet HDD. I was not a happy camper. That was DHL by the way.

[Weg Ban]

We ship a lot of client material by UPS and FedEx. On some of it we require a receiving signature. To my knowledge, we have never had either UPS or FedEx just drop something and run if we had the signature requirement in place — the shipper controls that. I have no experience with DHL, but at the same time, I've not heard that they don't do what they're supposed to do.

[pa_guns]

Hi

The only thing that they actually get a signature on here is a box identified as having a working firearm in it. Everything else, ammo, computers, powder gets left on the front porch.

There are other ways to insure a shipment than the carriers insurance. I have only seen it used on international stuff that had pretty high value though.

Given my experience with carrier insurance and damage it's not worth much at all anyway...

Bob

[Herb Clark]

When asked about a return for some sight change, Dennis at Kimber said insure the slide for $400.00 - I didn't even ask about insurance. When sending parts (not frames), I answer "machined parts" when asked.