Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.
I've been reading this thread with great interest as I might be in the situation of sending a high value watch to the US (from Europe). When I read the thread title, I faintly recalled my private law 101 classes from university and thought ok, pretty clear, the buyer bears the risk for shipping. I was then rather surprised to read the responses by mainly US-based members who know / or assume that the seller generally bears the risk until the buyer receives the item.
So I got curious and started to look into local Swiss law and by chance also found the equivalent German law. In Swiss private law (and I remembered correctly) the risk is generally passed on to the buyer upon completion of the purchase contract
if not agreed otherwise. The seller is off the hook once the item leaves his/her premises and handed over to a courier. The German law seems to make a distinction between a B2C and C2C transaction. In the latter case, i.e. a sale among private individuals, the German law is equivalent to the Swiss, i.e. the seller is off the hook once the parcel is handed over to the shipping company. It doesn't seem fair as the buyer has not yet control of his/her new property, but apparently it's based on old Roman law, periculum est emptoris (buyer's risk). This is how we Europeans roll
I recently send a watch to France. The shipping company would only provide insurance up to 500€ (pretty much standard). External insurance was not possible. Communicated the situation to the buyer, he accepted and prayed. Everything went well.
So as so often, rules and laws are different in different regions, which makes me hesitant of shipping a watch to the US because if anything goes wrong the buyer might hire
@gbesq as an attorney to hunt me down
![Smile :) :)](styles/default/xenforo/smilies/xsmile.png.pagespeed.ic.Ag8h2FS5_U.png)
(just joking on a Friday).
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