How to Manage AfterShip Protection Claims

Overview

AfterShip Protection is a great way to safeguard shipments from being lost, damaged, or stolen (porch piracy). Your customers can enjoy peace of mind with AfterShip Protection when they place an order from your Shopify store. If they have any issues with the package, they can easily file a claim and enjoy a great post-purchase experience.

📢 What you’ll learn

In this tutorial, we’ll discuss:

Key things to know about claim management
How to resolve a claim for your customer

Key things to know about claim management

Here’s what you should know about claim management while using AfterShip Protection.

For claim issues, the merchant acts as a bridge between customers and the insurance company.
The insurance company will only communicate with merchants regarding the claims.
The claim amount will be paid to merchants at the beginning of next month.
Merchants need to resolve the claims with their customers via refund, reorder, etc.
Merchants can resolve the claims either before or after the claim has been approved by the insurance company.

There are 2 main flows in the claim management portal

Submit and resolve the claim with your customers.
Monitor the claim status with the insurance company, and choose when to resolve the claim based on the claim status.

How to resolve a claim for your customer

1) View the claims submitted by the customers

After your customers submit claims to you, you can easily manage them together from the Claims page.
By default, we’ll let the merchants review the claims first to reduce back-and-forth communication between customers and the insurance company and to process the claim review faster.

When your customers submit a claim, it will appear on the ‘Claims’ page, and the resolution status will be Unsubmitted. You need to review the claim and submit it to the insurance company.

To view the claims:
Go to Protection > Claims > click a claim to see the details

To ‘Submit claim’:
Go to Protection > Claims > click ‘Submit claim’ under Actions



Know more about Claim status and Resolution status definitions below:
Claim status definitions
Resolution status definitions

If you don’t want to review the claim yourself and do not need the reshipping fee, you can directly send them to the insurance company. Please refer to How to submit claims to the insurance company directly.

2) Submit claims to the insurance company

For claims with Unsubmitted resolution status, you need to submit them to the insurance company for review and payment.

When you enter the Submit claim page, you can review the claim (left panel) and choose the resolution type (right panel).
If the claim is qualified, you can update the proof or description needed to process the claim faster and submit it to the insurance company.
If you think the claim is not qualified after talking to the customer, you can deny the claim and it will not be sent to the insurance company.



Claim info can be updated
Claim items (If you trigger the automation solution, it will auto-solve with these claim items)
Update the description and upload proof if needed
___ - For Lost in transit/Porch piracy, proof docs required are: Order receipt and Reship/refund proof
___ - For Damaged, proof docs required are: Damaged image, Order receipt, and Reship/refund proof

Resolution methods:
You can resolve the claim either before or after the claim is paid. AfterShip Protection provides 4 solutions for you to resolve the claim.

Note: If you resolve the claim before submitting it to the insurance company and provide the resolution proof, the insurance company can approve and pay the claim amount quickly.

You can choose a resolution method for your customer, and can use the resolution automation to improve efficiency.

If you trigger the automation, it means you have resolved the claim with your customer. (The automation only support Shopify platform now)
If you disable the automation, you can resolve the issue later or after the claim is approved. You can also use the automation when you click Mark as resolved.

When enabling the automation,
Replace with the same item(s)
Create a new order with the ‘claim items’ you selected on your Shopify store. The amount is the item amount after the discount.
The new order will include the ‘AfterShip Protection’ item too, which means the new order will be protected, and the merchant will pay the fee.
In the new order, we’ll write the Shopify order tag as auto-reordered, and will add a note on order.

Refund to original payment method
Refund the selected ‘claim items’ to your customer from your Shopify store payment. The amount is the item amount after the discount (This doesn't include the protection product amount, shipping fee, or tax). You can also update the refund amount based on your need.
In the refund order, we’ll write the Shopify order tag as auto-refunded, and will add a note on order.

Submit claim
Once you verify the information, please confirm and submit the claim. We'll send the claim and the resolution information to the insurance company.

3) 'Mark as resolved' claims for your customers

If you do not use the automation to resolve the claim, or directly submit claims to the insurance company.
The resolution status will become To be resolved. You can confirm the resolution with the Mark as resolved action.
Click ’Mark as resolved‘

Choose the resolution and trigger automation if needed. (The automation only support Shopify platform now)


When enabling the automation,
Replace with the same item(s)
Create a new order with the ‘claim items’ you selected on your Shopify store. The amount is the item amount after the discount.
The new order will include the ‘AfterShip Protection’ item too, which means the new order will be protected, and the merchant will pay the fee.
In the new order, we’ll write the Shopify order tag as auto-reordered, and will add a note on order.

Refund to original payment method
Refund the selected ‘claim items’ to your customer from your Shopify store payment. The amount is the item amount after the discount (This doesn't include the protection product amount, shipping fee, or tax). You can also update the refund amount based on your need.
In the refund order, we’ll write the Shopify order tag as auto-refunded, and will add a note on order.

Click button 'Mark as resolved'
If you use the automation resolution, we'll help you to create a new order or refund to your shopper.

4) Monitor the 'Claim status'

There are different claim statuses to help merchants and customers know the current status of the claim, such as: Unsubmitted, Submitted, Under review, Awaiting documents, Completed, Approved, Payment info requested, Paid, Denied, and Closed.

The Claim status is returned by the insurance company. When the claim status changes to Approved or Paid, it indicates that the claim will be paid or has been paid.

If you have any questions regarding the claim result, please contact the insurance company for help.

Updated on: 18/04/2023