I don't believe in an insurance panacea for all of these issues, but many of them have been solved by the excellent package insurance policy which our company purchases. For the last few years I've been a customer of U-PIC Insurance Services in Agoura Hills, CA (www.u-pic.com). U-PIC is a privately held corporation which has been licensed in California for 16 years, with zero complaints to the California insurance licensing board. Like every other insurance customer, our business is "rated" by them, and because we have had virtually no claims, we have a very economical flat-rate policy which insures not only our outgoing packages, but also, incredibly, incoming shipments, and third-party drop-shipments. Booksellers can insure any method of shipping, including m-bags (volume discount mail), APOs (books to the Armed Forces), and Global Priority and Express. My shipments are not only insured through the post office, but also if I ship through other carriers, such as FedEx, UPS, and DHL.

No matter what site I sell through, as long as I follow some basic guidelines, all of the books coming to and going from my company are insured. U-PIC is also incredibly flexible and will insure just single packages through their website and ordinarily bills based upon the dollar volume of packages shipped.

Here is a typical situation in which having this insurance is extremely useful. I recently shipped a set of The Greville Memoirs to a customer in the U.K. Although we paid for Air Mail, the books have not yet arrived within a reasonable time frame. We suspect that they are not lost, but like many other m-bag air mail shipments they have gone by boat instead of by plane. But, the question is, how does one deal with the customer who has paid for, but not received his books?

Because the shipment is insured, I am not worried that I am dealing with a dishonest customer. I'm quite sure the books are probably delayed, and possibly lost. After discussing the situation with the customer and at least a month had gone by, I asked him to fax us a signed statement with the pertinent information saying he had not received the books. I then filed a lost shipment report and request for tracking with the post office. At that point, as soon as the report with the post office is filed, I submitted all the paperwork with a claim to U-PIC.

Claims with U-PIC are handled expeditiously and the customer is refunded his money. If, and when the books arrive, (and sometimes they have, before the claim was completed) we cancel the claim. If the books never arrive, we have not been hurt financially; we are repaid and so is the customer.

The bottom line is that through the entire process I am able to put the needs of my customer first and never, ever, have to tell him that he in fact was ordering books "at his own risk", or eat the loss. Even if a package is stolen after its Delivery Confirmation barcode is swiped by the delivering letter carrier, U-PIC will cover the shipment. They can, of course, create reports that show them if they've got a particular recurring problem with any customer, dealer, or carrier.