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The refund and apology letter were nice gestures.
After losing family’s $846K inheritance, UPS offers to refund $32 shipping fee
By Max Jaeger
December 14, 2017 | 10:47am
After losing family’s $846K inheritance, UPS offers to refund $32 shipping fee
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Brown left this Canadian family in the red.
The United Parcel Service lost a Canadian man’s $846,000 inheritance, and bank TD Canada Trust is refusing to refund the missing money 10 months later, according to a CBC report.
UPS has only offered $32 and an apology letter — and TD hasn’t paid out a dime for the supposedly bank-guaranteed lost dough — leading to “many a night of lost sleep, and gnashing of teeth and anger. Frustration, unbelievable frustration” for Lorette Taylor and her brother Louis Paul Herbert, according to Taylor.
After their father died, Herbert said, he went to his local UPS store near Cornwall, Ontario, where he was expecting a package from sister Taylor containing his share of their inheritance in the form of a bank draft, but it never came.
“I’m waiting at the UPS store, around 3 p.m. because that’s when they said the guys came in, nothing shows up,” Herbert told CBC News. “I came back in the evening. Nothing shows up … and I’m wondering, ‘What’s happened to my inheritance?'”
Taylor sent the money through UPS from her lawyer in Georgetown, Ont., about 270 miles away, so Herbert wouldn’t have to drive to pick up the hefty sum.
“I should have just driven,” Herbert said. “It’s something I kick myself in the rear over every day.”
Taylor obtained the bank draft — which is like a certified check, but the money is taken from a customer’s account immediately and held by the bank until the draft is cashed — in February, after TD told her it was the safest way to send the large sum.
“They said a bank draft was more appropriate” for that amount of money, Taylor said. “Never in my wildest imagination did I think something like this would happen.”
The bank assured Taylor and her husband the money could be replaced if the draft was lost.
The delivery company, whose slogan once asked “What can brown do for you?,” was able to track the dough to a parcel distribution center north of Toronto, but said the trail goes cold after that.
“While UPS’ service is excellent in our industry, we are unfortunately not perfect. Occasionally, the loss of a package does occur,” spokeswoman Nirali Raval told CBC, declining to answer specific questions.
“Our records indicate that our team followed UPS protocol and an exhaustive search for this package was completed by our Operations and Security teams. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate the package,” she continued.
The company refunded the $32 it cost Taylor to mail the lost parcel and sent an apology letter.
“That’s nice of them to say, but it doesn’t solve my problems,” Herbert said.
And TD is refusing to refund the money unless Taylor signs an agreement to pay back the bank if someone cashes the lost draft, which does not expire like regular checks.
“It also said that if something happened to me, for example, my children and my heirs and my spouse and my executor would have to pay this debt,” she said. “Well, I didn’t really want to sign this.”
She signed anyway, but the bank “never paid anyone a dime,” according to Taylor. Instead it demanded she let TD put a lien against her house in case the errant check was cashed, but she refused.
“If the bank really wants indemnity, then UPS should sign it,” she said.
TD did not answer CBC’s questions but sent a general statement explaining that “before we can agree to a replacement or reimbursement, we need appropriate security to be in place.”
Herbert, 61, said he’s maxed out his credit cards and needs the money to survive.
“TD has the money. The money is actually sitting in an account with TD. Nothing has been stolen. It’s there. That’s my inheritance,” he said, adding that if he had the cash, “I would have been retired.”
_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
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