Losing a consignment outright is about as clean a deficiency as the Act contemplates. The courier undertook to carry a parcel from A to B, took money for it, and did not do it.
Section 2(42) names transport in the definition of service, so a courier is a service provider. Section 2(11) defines deficiency as any fault, imperfection, shortcoming or inadequacy in the manner of performance required under the contract, and includes negligence. A parcel that never arrives satisfies that on the bare facts, and the burden then shifts in practice to the courier to explain what happened to it. Where a road carriage is involved there is also the Carriage by Road Act, 2007 governing common carriers, and a consignment sent through the postal system is dealt with separately in our note on liability for a lost parcel.
The clause on the back of the consignment note
Two routes get you past the cap and they are worth pleading in the alternative. The first is the contract's own terms. Most consignment notes offer a declared value option with a risk surcharge, and if you declared the value and paid the surcharge, the cap does not apply to you by its own words. The second is the unfairness argument. Section 49(2) gives the State Commission, and Section 59(2) gives the National Commission, express power to declare any term of a contract which is unfair to a consumer to be null and void. A District Commission does not have that declaratory power in the same terms, so at district level the point is argued as an unreasonable condition that cannot cover the courier's own negligence, rather than as a formal declaration.
What you can actually claim
Section 39(1) lets a commission order the return of the charges paid with such interest as it decides, compensation for any loss or injury suffered due to the negligence of the opposite party, punitive damages under the express proviso where the conduct deserves it, and adequate costs. That is a wide menu. The narrow part is proof of value, and this is where most of these complaints lose money rather than lose outright.
- The consignment note or airway bill, both sides, including the printed conditions you intend to attack
- The invoice or purchase record for the contents, which is the single document that fixes what you get back
- The tracking history, printed on the day you notice the loss, because these pages get updated and go stale
- Your written complaint to the courier and its reply, or the absence of one
- Proof of the consequence: the visa appointment fee wasted, the replacement you had to buy, the deadline you missed
- If you declared the value, the declaration and the receipt for the risk surcharge
Lost, damaged and delayed are three different claims
Keep them apart, because the proof differs. A total loss is proved by the tracking record and the courier's own admission, and the measure is the value of the contents plus the consequences. Damage in transit is proved by the condition of the packaging at delivery, which is why an open delivery, insisted on at the door before you sign, is worth the awkwardness with the delivery agent. A delay is the weakest of the three and needs you to show that time mattered and that the courier knew it did, so the booking record showing an express or timed service is what carries it. Where a shipment arrives short, note the discrepancy on the delivery sheet itself before signing, because a clean signed receipt is the first thing the courier will produce.
The other defence you will meet is that the contents were never declared, so the courier could not have known what it was carrying. That answers a claim for a spectacular consequential loss the courier had no way of foreseeing. It does not answer a claim for the ordinary value of a parcel the courier undertook to deliver and did not, and it certainly does not convert a hundred rupee cap into a fair measure of the loss. Meet it head on in the complaint rather than waiting for it.
Send a notice before you file
Couriers settle. They have a claims department, a standard payout matrix, and no interest in defending a district level complaint about one parcel. A short notice setting out the consignment number, the date, the contents, the value with proof attached and a fourteen day demand very often ends the matter, and if it does not, the unanswered notice is a useful document to file with the complaint. Our note on how to send a legal notice covers the form. Do the arithmetic before you send it, though, because a notice with a round number and no working invites an argument, while a notice with a schedule of six proved figures invites a cheque.
Time and forum
Section 69 gives you two years from the date the cause of action arose. For a lost consignment that is the date the courier confirmed the loss or finally refused the claim, not the date of booking, and the refusal letter is the document to preserve. On forum, the consideration paid is the courier charge, which is small, so this is a District Commission complaint, and Section 34(2)(d) lets you file where you reside. Both points are worked through in the answers on limitation and where to file.