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Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

(podcast.play.date)
173 points textadventure | 1 comments | 22 Nov 24 06:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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gambiting ◴[22 Nov 24 09:25 UTC] No.42212376[source]▶
The thing that surprised me the most about it is that FedEx didn't just pay them the 400k for lost shipment. They had all the proof that it was lost, all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. Even after their "higher ups" got involved all that FedEx could do was "huh, sucks to be you I guess?" Does freight shipment not have insurance? What's going on here?
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whazor ◴[22 Nov 24 11:13 UTC] No.42212856[source]▶
Shipment insurance is normally an optional add-on. IMO, if the shipper doesn’t get it, it is on them.

It is nicer for the shipper to decide the value and pay the corresponding price for that. Because you need to know the replacement value of that lost item. This is dependent on all kinds of factors.

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gambiting ◴[22 Nov 24 11:19 UTC] No.42212889[source]▶
Is there any scenario where someone would knowingly decide not to take insurance on a 400k shipment? What would be the reason for doing so?

In this case the shipper is the company behind the Playdate, so it seems weird to me they wouldn't insure their own stock. But maybe there's a good reason why this isn't done?

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1. sakjur ◴[22 Nov 24 11:58 UTC] No.42213103[source]▶
I’m not sure about Playdate, but for a larger company, it’ll be beneficial to stop paying fpr the insurance after a while — the insurance companies bank on the difference between risk tolerance for individuals and in groups. Your liquidity might not be able to survive an event that is fairly insignificant in the context of a larger group (say your house burning down — devastating for you, but zooming out to a city-level it happens occasionally).

Larger companies can develop a higher risk tolerance in-house and eliminate the middle hand, and that’ll let them siphon the excess to their shareholders rather than the insurance company.