Out of the 5 boxes that we sent; only 4 was received before Christmas last year. The 5th box was received very much later on, only after numerous complaints that a box was still missing. The last box when we received, it has been tampered with and about one eighth of the load was missing. We knew we had things missing when we were unpacking boxes e.g. Christmas tree, baby bottles, tire pump, answering machine. Then we found further discrepancies when we looked for other things.

We reported the matter to the Embassy shipping section and also to the Insurance Company. The total cost of our missing items is over $7,000.00 and we have been paying them a little over $1,000 a year since 1991. The name of the company is UNIRISC in Washington DC

We have all the supporting papers which says which boxes left West Africa and which ones were received and clearly shows also the ones that were not received. We put our case to UNIRISC and they denied that anything was missing. They stated that they will not honor the claim because we did not state that there had been a loss at the time the goods were delivered. This would have been impossible to know, without having unpacked every single item when the movers dropped the boxes on our doorstep.

We want to sue them for what we lost and also for what we have paid them in yearly premiums and the agony and the time we lost in trying to recover this loss.

Our prayer is: Is there anyone out there who could give us a legal opinion as to whether or not we would be able to win if we give you the case to take UNIRISC to court to recover our losses for a reasonable fee. 

ConsumerAffairs.Com responds: 

Our in-house counsel reviewed your report and we forwarded it to outside counsel with greater expertise in this area. Their answer: Because the loss occurred outside the United States, there is no legal recourse open to you.

However, we will be pursuing this with various government agencies and the press in Washington in hopes of getting someone to take a closer look at UNIRISC. We will let you know what else we learn.