WARNING TO THE SENSITIVE! CONTAINS PICTURES OF EXTREME POSTER DAMAGE!
As I mentioned in another post, part of my poster collection was damaged in an international move, from Japan to UK. This has never happened before – I literally moved around the world and the posters were always safely delivered. But this time the shipping company screwed up. Fortunately I was able to claim compensation through insurance. I thought it would be helpful to post my experiences here.
What happened was that the shipping company completely disregarded my many instructions that the posters were valuable and should be packed securely. Instead they left them in my filing cabinet, with just a bit of wrapping paper on top!
This could have still worked out, if the cabinet had been left level at all times. Unfortunately, they packed the cabinet STANDING ON ITS SIDE in the shipping container, where it was left for about two months! This is what we saw when I opened the cabinet…
All the posters had collected in one end. Many of them had been crumpled up, particularly in the corners. It was a mess. Fortunately the bigger posters were less harmed, but all medium sized posters – Japanese, Thai, German, etc. had heavy damage.
I immediately started to take pictures and notified the local delivery company. Of course, it was not their fault – it was the packers in Japan that made the error. But it is very important to immediately notify and document all the damage, otherwise you will have a very hard time claiming any compensation!
Here are some more pictures, showing the damage as I was unpacking.
Next, I was contacted by an insurance company. I was asked to give an estimate to the value of the loss. Fortunately I had a complete inventory of everything so I could use that as a basis.
I went through the inventory and assigned a value to every poster. I looked at eBay, Kinoart, eMovieposter etc. to get fair values. I was surprised that some of my psoters had become A LOT more valuable since I bought them! Anyway, I was careful to get fair values when I could, but for many posters there were no sales figures available, so I put what I thought was reasonable.
Then I estimated the damage. This was fairly straightforward since the posters were organized by country and size, and sustained about the same level of damage. I estimate:
• Minimal damage – 20% loss of value
• Medium damage – 50% loss
• Extensive damage – 80% loss
This turned out to be a good strategy. The posters still have value to me, even though the re-sale value may have gone down. If I had declared them a 100% loss, the insurance company would have taken the posters, and sold them to get back their loss, or possibly even trashed them. I was happy to be able to keep the whole collection and plan to have some of the more valuable items restored.
I put these estimates into the spreadsheet and came up with a final figure for the total loss. I then prepared a document with my reasoning, documentation (lots of pictures!) and the spreadsheet, and sent it off to the insurance company.
The company then requested an inspection. This was performed by a nice guy who drove up from South of England, had never heard of movie poster collecting! I showed him the cabinet, pulled out various posters and showed the damage, and explained how I arrived at the values. He spot-checked the spreadsheet and asked me to pull out different posters and justify their value and the extent of damage. He was obviously surprised that these pieces of paper were worth anything, but at the end he was clearly convinced and said he learned something new!
Then I didn’t hear anything for a very long time. I pinged the insurance company after about a month and they said it was a complicated case and they were waiting for the inspector’s report.
Finally, more than two months after the shipment arrived, the insurance company sent me a form to fill out my bank details. Then they transferred exactly the sum I had asked for, no questions asked! Even though I knew I was in the right I was a bit surprised that it happened so painlessly, but I’m not complaining…
In the end I got quite a bit of money, and I got to keep the posters! I would of course have preferred if it never happened at all, but the insurance company was quite helpful and the process was fairly painless because I had so much documentation.
My advice for anyone who is moving, or just worrying about insurance in general:
* DOCUMENT BEFORE! Take photos, keep a spreadsheet, make sure you update it to accurately reflect your collection. This is a pain to begin with, but is going to be incredibly useful if the worst happens. You will also need ORIGINAL insurance documents and shipping manifestos – copies are not accepted – so make sure to keep all paperwork in a safe place.
* DOCUMENT WHEN IT HAPPENS! Immediately start taking photos of the damage, and make sure you have all the papers in order. For instance, if you sign off a shipment without reporting the damage, you will not be able to claim.
* DOCUMENT AFTERWARDS! Submit a fair estimate of the damage, the value, and your loss. It’s probably not a good idea to “pad” the claim – the inspector will be able to sniff that out for sure and you could find the whole claim being questioned!
So that’s it. Fingers crossed it doesn’t happen to you, but if it does, keep your cool and DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT!
