Released Rate Liability or Full-Value Coverage: What Your Move Actually Protects

Most people who sign moving paperwork read the price line, check the dates, and initial wherever the crew leader points. The valuation box tends to get a glance. It deserves more than that, because it is the one place where you decide how much the carrier owes you if an item is lost or damaged, and the default amount is smaller than most households expect.

Valuation is not insurance

Mayflower's word for this protection is valuation. It is a level of carrier liability set by Mayflower's tariffs and by federal laws and regulations, and it comes with limits and exclusions. It is not insurance, and Mayflower does not sell insurance. If you want to know how your homeowner's or renter's policy treats a move, that conversation belongs with your own insurance representative, ideally before the truck is loaded rather than after.

At Earl Farnsworth Express, as an authorized Mayflower agent, there are two valuation programs to choose from. Each one changes how a claim is settled and sets the ceiling on what Mayflower can be asked to pay.

What sixty cents a pound really pays

Released Rate Liability is the basic level. It comes at no charge, which is its appeal. Under it, Mayflower's maximum liability for loss or damage to any article is 60 cents multiplied by the weight of that article. The words that matter are per article.

Run the arithmetic on your own belongings. A ten-pound lamp would be capped at six dollars. A thirty-pound flat-screen television would be capped at eighteen. A hundred-and-fifty-pound sofa would be capped at ninety. Those figures are illustrations of the formula, not promises about any particular claim, but they make the point: the cap follows the weight of the item, not what you paid for it or what it costs to replace today. A light, expensive thing, like a laptop or a framed painting, is exactly where basic coverage runs thinnest.

What Full-Value Coverage does instead

Full-Value Coverage works from a different idea. If an article is lost, destroyed or damaged while it is under Mayflower's interstate authority, Mayflower will do one of two things. It will repair the article to the condition it was in when Mayflower received it, or pay you the cost of that repair. Or it will replace the article with one of like kind and quality, or pay you the cost of the replacement. Mayflower decides which settlement method applies. An additional charge applies for this level of protection.

There are three deductible choices, and they are worth reading slowly:

• Option A: full-value protection with no deductible.
• Option B: full-value protection with a $250 deductible.
• Option C: full-value protection with a $500 deductible.

Under full-value coverage, Mayflower's total liability is the amount you declare as the value of your shipment. There is a floor on that number: the declared value must be at least the weight of the shipment multiplied by $5.00. A shipment that weighs 8,000 pounds, for example, would need a declared value of at least $40,000. Ask your Farnsworth agent how the charge changes between A, B and C for your particular move, because the answer depends on the shipment.

How to decide

Start with a plain question: if the dining table, the piano bench, the guest-room dresser and the television all came off the truck damaged, could you absorb the cost of replacing them? If yes, basic coverage may be a reasonable choice. If the honest answer is no, full-value coverage is built for that situation.

A deductible is a trade. A higher one means you carry the first slice of any claim yourself. Households with mostly sturdy, replaceable furniture sometimes accept that. Households with delicate pieces, antiques or a lot of electronics usually feel better with the no-deductible option, because small breakages are the likeliest kind of claim and a deductible would swallow them.

Declare your shipment honestly. A declared value set far below what your belongings are worth leaves you under-protected in exactly the way basic coverage does. A short walk through the house with a notebook, room by room, usually gets you to a realistic figure in an evening.

Write it yourself, on the bill of lading

This part is easy to miss and costly to get wrong. You must select the valuation program, and you must write your choice in the Valuation box on the bill of lading in your own handwriting. It is not something the crew fills in for you, and it should not be left to a default you never looked at. Read the box, write the choice, and keep your copy of the document with your moving papers until every box is unpacked and every piece is checked.

Pricey items are a separate conversation

Jewelry, art, coin collections, antiques and similar articles follow their own rules. In the moving industry, anything worth more than $100 per pound is an article of extraordinary value, and it has to be listed on a High-Value Inventory form. If it is not listed, Mayflower's maximum liability for it is limited to $100 per pound per article, which can be far below its worth. We cover that form in a separate article on packing the things that break.

If you are weighing these options for a move out of Marin, call Earl Farnsworth Express at (415) 459-6683. We can walk through valuation in plain language and set up a free in-home or virtual survey, so the choice you write on the bill of lading is one you made on purpose.