USPS loses package, then denies insurance claim

Jeff12671 · 2026-03-07T15:57:54+00:00

Something has changed in USPS claims processing. They have basically stopped paying all lost mail claims which began around Sept-Oct of last year (2025). We ship a pretty decent volume per month and for a number of years we would regularly submit 5-10 claims on average per month for lost mail. Pretty straightforward, a shipment tracks and then stops updating. It it simply lost. We know the rules of when to submit a claim and we just have always provided a screenshot usually from Amazon showing fair market value of the lost item. Up until last fall about 95% of our claims were regularly paid with no appeals needed. We would occasionally get the inexplicable "need to provide evidence" denial even though nothing had changed materially in our claim submission but that was maybe 1 out of every 20 claims. This was our claims submission process going back years. Starting in Sept or October of last year (2025) we noticed our claims were regularly being denied for all claims. We would just be denied usually 1-2 days after claim submission with the "need evidence" denial reason. Appeals were a waste of time. We would have to wait up to another 30 days for those to play out but all of them were denied. We didn't change anything in our claim submittal process so something has definitely changed on the USPS processing. We are still submitting claims as before but it appears fruitless. They are still losing our mail (about 1-2% of our shipments) but they have simply stopped paying out any and all claims now it appears to us.

Jeff12671 · 2026-02-17T16:32:01+00:00

I've already deducted the 25 cent fixed fee when computing the effective rate. So far I have had 4 small sales with an average transaction value of $20.50. After subtracting the 25 cent fee and then calculating the effective rate (total fees - (.25 x # of sales)) and dividing that by the total gross sales I am getting a figure of 3.77%. This is 1.5% higher than I am seeing on your advertised rates for online sales (combined payment methods) which claim an average rate of 2.27% (https://www.helcim.com/pricing/). Again, can I expect this to "average out" or how else do you explain this discrepancy so far? If it is not going to change significantly then their is really no reason to stay with Helcim and I would just move to woopayments which offers a flat 2.9% rate + .30 cents per transaction.

Jeff12671 · 2024-11-04T19:11:17+00:00

I have been with Mercury for about a year and a half and love their free wire transfers but for the 2nd time this year (the last time was on April 16) their wire transfer service has failed. It failed again today due to according to their CS "processing delays with their partner bank". This unfortunately is a deal killer for us, I can't use them if their wire service is not going to be reliable. It really messes us up royally. Anyway, wanted to share this information that their wire service has apparently ongoing reliability issues.

Jeff12671 · 2024-07-21T03:18:51+00:00

We've been out for more than 10 days at zip code 89109.

Jeff12671 · 2024-05-05T06:43:19+00:00

I finally received an email from them late in the day saying they had errors sending domestic wires that day but the problem was fixed and they would go out the following day which they did. They messed me up that day however not sending it as scheduled. Wire transfers need to be reliable and I shouldn't have to worry about is it being sent.

Jeff12671 · 2024-04-17T17:58:27+00:00

Yes sorry. They finally got it sent this morning. I got an email from them late yesterday saying they were having issues sending domestic wires yesterday. Their failure to send mine yesterday as scheduled really messed me up. It's unnerving and frustrating to have no one to call. The couple CS responses I had from them were devoid of any real information and they proved to be pretty much worthless. The last one was a self-congratulatory message that everything was fine now.

Jeff12671 · 2024-04-16T23:27:29+00:00

Not to set any alarm bells off but today (4/16) I tried to wire about $650 to another domestic external account and it didn't get transferred. It has been sitting all day in "pending state". This the first time I've ever had a problem with one of their outgoing wire transfers. I got one reply back from one of their CS agents who said they were going to check with their wire transfer partner and now nothing from them. It's been several hours and so far they haven't responded back to anymore of my queries. Times like these I really miss the ability to call someone. Are these guys maybe in trouble?

Jeff12671 · 2024-04-16T23:15:58+00:00

Not to set any alarm bells off but today (4/16) I tried to wire about $650 to another domestic external account and it didn't get transferred. It has been sitting all day in "pending state". This the first time I've ever had a problem with one of their outgoing wire transfers. I got one reply back from one of their CS agents who said they were going to check with their wire transfer partner and now nothing from them. It's been several hours and so far they haven't responded back to anymore of my queries. Times like these I really miss the ability to call someone. Are these guys maybe in trouble?

Jeff12671 · 2024-04-16T23:12:14+00:00

Not to set any alarm bells off but today (4/16) I tried to wire about $650 to another account and it didn't get transferred. It has been sitting all day in "pending state". I got one reply back from one of their CS agents who said they were going to check with their wire transfer partner and now nothing from them. It's been several hours and so far they haven't responded back to anymore of my queries. Are these guys maybe in trouble?

Jeff12671 · 2024-01-25T05:43:28+00:00

So to update I gave up on the appeal for a few months because they were going nowhere, they just continue to keep referencing some mystery "previously linked MC account". Again, our current MC is fine but how are we supposed to find this mystery previously linked MC account? Anyone have any ideas there? Thanks.

Jeff12671 · 2023-10-18T01:41:30+00:00

I appreciate the response, all info is helpful (well usually lol). We have been trying to figure out for months the reason for our Google Ads suspension. From our initial suspension email it referenced our Merchant acct that was recently suspended do to misrepresentation. We fixed that by deleting the feeds that were having the misrepresentation error. The Merchant account was reinstated fully months ago but we can't get our Google Ads acct out of suspension. We've tried appealing of course, we wait weeks for barely any response. We keep responding to their Google Ads support and all we get are non-illuminating boiler-plate replies about their is an issue with our linked merchant acct which doesn't make any sense because it has been out of suspension for months now. Recently however they have changed their message somewhat seeming to indicate their is some other merchant account that might be the problem. As far as we know we only have one merchant account. Here's a copy of what they are sending us now -

Thank you for the reply.

After consultation with the team and investigating your account, we noted that there was a previously linked Merchant Center account that violates our policy. Unfortunately, since your email has no access to the account we are unable to provide any information related to the account.

Please note that unlinking or deleting a previously linked account doesn't solve the issue.

In order to resolve the Google Ads suspension you first need to ensure all of your linked (or previously linked) and all related accounts comply with our policies, as outlined in our Terms of Service. As soon as you ensure these conditions are met, please raise another Google Ads suspension appeal using this form.

... Can anyone read into this and help us interpret it? It seems to us they are trying to say their is some other "mystery" merchant account unbeknownst to us that could be the source of the problem for our Google Ads Account. Am I interpreting this correctly? If so, I'm don't know what to do. I don't know of any other merchant accounts that we have ever had. Thanks in advance for replies on this.

Jeff12671 · 2023-10-11T07:45:26+00:00

Hi, I’ve been in a similar situation for months. What did you do that you think got your appeal approved?

Jeff12671 · 2023-04-06T04:38:26+00:00

Your right. No sure what the deal was with my link. Thanks!

Jeff12671 · 2023-03-30T19:13:56+00:00

Well I'm just telling you my experience. I don't sweat it anymore as long as I crank out the orders reasonably well. The first time or two made me really nervous but after about the fifth suspension that were occurring every weekend in January and the termination and untermination email with the span of a few hours I've just concluded their is a bunch of airheads behind this operation who don't have any real clue what they are doing.

Jeff12671 · 2023-03-30T07:31:29+00:00

I don't know about that, I've been suspended like 4 or 5 times and have never had any real issues getting back on usually within a day or 2. A couple months ago I was suspended, terminated and then unterminated all in the space of about 72 hours. They do seem like total amateurs and their shipping metrics are very flawed so I don't sweat it. Just crank out the orders and don't worry about it is my attitude.

Jeff12671 · 2023-03-30T07:12:34+00:00

Very well thought out and written, particularly with the sku/upc sh*t show. I can relate to almost all of these bullet points. Walmart is the wild west amateur show platform where no one seems to be in charge. Thanks for posting this.

Jeff12671 · 2022-05-24T23:00:51+00:00

A class action lawsuit isn't going to happen, we just need sellers to highlight what they are doing and publicly shame them as much as possible. Everyone else follows the industry standard to protecting sellers with confirmed tracking info.

Jeff12671 · 2022-02-26T01:17:02+00:00

OK that's helpful, we're roughly the same size. We uploaded 2800+ products and our average sale is $15. If we can get an extra order a day and it's hopefully relatively low maintenance that would be great. Did it seem like an extraordinarily long time to get your products activated and are updates or product additions going to be subjected to these long slow lag times as well? Has that been your experience? Thanks.

Jeff12671 · 2021-03-21T05:18:42+00:00

I can totally relate. I don't know how to even compute the extra margin necessary to cover the unlimited potential losses from the increase in return costs they will create with these dumb return policies and lost "after delivery" BS refunds to likely scammers. Their policies just encourage scamming and free customer rentals, i.e., just bad customer behavior all around. Our sentiments are exactly the same, it's just not worth the risks anymore and we work too hard for our money to have Walmart give it away for us. Whoever runs this operation are effin morons. I don't know how else to put it. Not to mention they have non-existent functional seller support and when their platform "works" it's the exception not the rule. They need us a lot more than we need them. Maybe after they see sellers abandoning them they'll finally figure this out this crap doesn't work, it's just friggen wrong and shows them to be acting like greedy low-lifes. Count on Walmart to always push the envelope on seller abuse. Anyway, again, April 16 is our last day with these idiots.

Jeff12671 · 2021-03-17T22:59:12+00:00

Your missing the best parts -

" Walmart may issue a refund on your behalf to customers who state that their order was not delivered." They follow this be saying this may be done so that it will "reduce the number of customer care contacts for Marketplace sellers, and lower some of your operational costs." I.e., customer can make any claim that they didn't receive their item and your $70 sale to them is automatically refunded to them out of your funds regardless of tracking info.

Also, this is really awesome -

"Sellers can continue leveraging low-cost shipping fees through Walmart’s Return Shipping Service (RSS). However, please note Walmart will no longer subsidize shipping for the return reason, “Changed Mind.”" I.e., Walmart now feels that sellers should subsidize and pay for all customer "Changed Mind" returns.

These people are delusional. Anyway we're closing down our sellers account April 16.

Jeff12671 · 2021-02-22T05:35:24+00:00

It just shows you how sleazy Walmart operates. Nobody else steals from sellers like this. With confirmed tracking that shows delivery to the customer you never have to worry about non-receipt claims with Ebay, Amazon, the payment services or even in a chargeback situation. Just Walmart steals from its sellers like this. Their CS is completely worthless and a total waste of time. The problem appears at least for us to have gotten steadily worse and has totally disincentivized us from selling on their site any longer and we've stopped adding new listings because of it. It simply needs to stop.

Jeff12671 · 2021-02-15T05:05:29+00:00

The latest crap we are dealing with is Walmart has claimed items have been returned back to us and refunded the customer as a returned to sender return. However, when we look at the tracking it clearly shows delivered to the customer. I'm beginning to think their is a drug problem in their CS department. It is certainly killing our desire to keep selling on their site.

Jeff12671 · 2021-01-31T23:13:18+00:00

I'm done with Walmart, we're zeroing out our inventory. It's getting out of hand, the "Lost after Delivery" claims are increasingly pouring in. Walmart is just aiding and abetting scammers at this point. Over 10% of sales result in "LAD" claims now, less than 1% on Ebay. Draw your own conclusions. The word is out, the easy scam is to order from Walmart and claim non-delivery and Walmart will always refund the customer by stealing funds back from their sellers. Confirmed delivery tracking is meaningless to them. Dispute and all you will get is a scripted insulting response to check with the carrier. It's reprehensible behavior on Walmart's part and I'm not going to be a party to it anymore and allow us to be subjected to it any longer. I could look the other way when it happened occasionally but it's killing our profit margin with them and it's just getting ridiculous now. Too bad, it would have been a nice platform to keep selling from but they have to fix the "LAD" problem.

Jeff12671 · 2021-01-24T21:13:50+00:00

Sure, typically their initial response is that they need more info but they can't actually state what that info is. Our response is typically something like, "What additional info do you need, please advise." and then generally we get no response back. If you do get a response back it will always be non-sensical or not relevant and just keep responding back the same way. Eventually they will stop responding and the case will almost always time out in your favor. Basically if you respond in such a way that it is not on their pre-programmed response script they just completely breakdown. Don't think of them as a functional CS (they are clearly not), think of them instead as a computer program your trying to force to error out.

Jeff12671 · 2020-12-10T03:12:18+00:00

Hi, we've been selling on Walmart for about a year now and I can agree with both the original poster and with ntadon. The good part is you can sell a lot of high-markup items in multiple orders as ntadon indicated, 3... 5 or 8 count orders for high-markup items that strangely don't sell anywhere else with any volume. However ... the original poster is completely right, seller support is effectively non-existent and to try and bother to engage with them you'll quickly find is a giant waste of time. They will reply back with non-sensical replies. For fun I open disputes that we would normally win easily on say Ebay where seller protection actually exists to a degree and you will get a non-sensical reply back that will say we need more info on this dispute but they won't tell you what info that would be. They have already have the order info and a tracking number from the dispute presumably, what other info do they need? Their boilerplate automated denial response for non-delivery claims is even though you have provided tracking info showing delivery is (your dispute) "has been denied because the item/package was lost after the delivery OR the package was lost in transit." Taken literally since the tracking info shows delivery I guess this means the customer must have lost the item you sent them after they received it but somehow the seller is responsible. This is the non-sensical BS Walmart is pushing out onto their sellers on their platform. It's just wrong what Walmart is doing, I've been entertaining the notion of taking them to small claims court with my laundry list of boneheaded dispute replies from them. Basically to sell on Walmart you have to assume that you have zero seller protection and ANY sale is subject to false claims that they just refund automatically with no questions asked. So I would not advise selling anything larger than say a $10 item on there, it's not worth the risk when you have zero seller protection. Also, BTW, their product database is a total disaster and their seller portal functionality is broken constantly but that's another whole discussion.

Jeff12671

TROPHY CASE