Is shipping insurance on DHgate worth buying?

Why

• The carrier tier decides the answer. Cover costs the same share of declared value whichever service is used, while the loss rate roughly triples from express to economy. The same premium is therefore a poor buy on a lane losing one point two per cent of parcels and a defensible one on a lane losing three point four per cent of them.
• The platform route already recovers part of a loss. The recovery parameter records about sixty per cent of the value recovered through a claim when no cover was taken, so cover is buying the remaining gap rather than buying the item back. Any comparison that treats the uncovered outcome as a total loss overstates what the premium is worth.
• Cover pays against a declared value, which makes the declaration the real decision. A parcel declared below its cost recovers only the declared figure, so a cheap premium on an under-declared parcel insures a number rather than an item, and the shortfall between the number and the item lands on the buyer.
• Read the cover terms before running the arithmetic. A premium buys a defined payout against defined events, and parcels that are seized, revalued or refused at a border often sit outside those events. Working the expected value first and the terms second produces a number for a risk that the cover may not carry at all. Ask one question before deciding: which events does the premium pay for, and which are excluded. Write the answer beside the premium figure, because the arithmetic is only as good as the list of events it is applied to. Where the covered list is short, the expected-value comparison describes a smaller risk than the one actually being carried, and the number stops being a reason to decline cover.

When this answer flips

• The declared value is small while the freight is large, as on a light accessory bought on its own. The premium is then trivial beside the freight already committed, and the decision matters far less than the choice of carrier tier made on the same page.
• The item cannot be replaced at the same price, because the batch has moved on or the storefront has gone. The arithmetic changes from expected value to replacement difficulty, and cover becomes a way of buying a repair route rather than of buying a payout.
• The carrier's own terms already include a liability floor for the tier being used. Where that floor covers the item's value, a second premium is being paid for a loss that is already covered once, and the two documents should be read together before the decision is made. Where the two disagree, the carrier's own terms are the ones that will be applied to a claim.

Three things to do next

1. Run the cover decision on your declared value
2. See the loss rate for each carrier tier
3. Check who pays when a declared value is challenged