At a glance
Real-time count of Japan Post damage / loss / non-delivery claims that are currently open and unresolved. Each claim represents tied-up revenue, unhappy customers, and operational time. Domestic claims are rare (Japan Post’s network is high-reliability); international EMS claims are more frequent (transit damage, customs loss, recipient disputes). The card surfaces aging claims for action.
| What it counts | COUNT(claims WHERE status IN ('OPEN', 'UNDER_INVESTIGATION', 'AWAITING_DOCUMENTATION')) from the Japan Post Claims API in real time. |
| Delivery success criterion | A claim is opened when the merchant or recipient files a damage / loss / non-delivery report. Closure happens when Japan Post issues a payout, denial, or “delivered” confirmation. |
| On-time threshold | The >0 unresolved >7d alert fires on any claim aged more than 7 days without resolution. Japan Post’s published claim-resolution SLA is 14 days domestic, 30 days international; the 7-day alert catches claims trending toward SLA breach. |
| Returns / RTO | Counted. Return-to-sender claims (parcel returned undelivered, customer requested refund) are a separate sub-category but appear in the same count. |
| Service level scope | All tracked services. Yu-Pack, Yu-Pack Cool, EMS, Letter Pack Plus, Letter Pack Light. Untracked services (regular mail) do not produce trackable claims. |
| Claim categories | (a) Damage in transit (cracked, crushed, water damage), (b) Loss in transit, (c) Non-delivery despite “delivered” scan, (d) Recipient-claimed-not-received, (e) Customs loss (international only). |
| Currency | n/a for the count itself; per-claim payout values are JPY. |
| Multi-claim consignments | A consignment with multiple claims (rare, e.g. damage AND loss of one item) counts as one open claim. |
| Time window | RT (real-time, refreshed at API sync interval) |
| Alert trigger | >0 unresolved >7d, the alert is binary; any aged claim should trigger merchant-side follow-up with Japan Post’s claims team. |
| Roles | owner, operations, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Japan Post data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A Japanese-headquartered DTC apparel brand based in Osaka, ~3,200 outbound parcels per week mixed Yu-Pack + EMS. Reading at 09:30 JST on 12 Apr 26.| Service | Open claims | Aged >7 days | Aged >14 days | Total claim value (JPY) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yu-Pack (domestic) | 4 | 1 | 0 | JPY 32,400 |
| Yu-Pack Cool (refrigerated) | 2 | 1 | 1 | JPY 18,200 |
| EMS US | 6 | 4 | 2 | JPY 142,800 |
| EMS UK | 9 | 6 | 4 | JPY 218,400 |
| EMS EU | 7 | 5 | 3 | JPY 168,200 |
| EMS APAC | 3 | 1 | 0 | JPY 48,600 |
| Total open claims (this card) | 31 | 18 (alert) | 10 | JPY 628,600 |
- 18 claims aged more than 7 days trips the alert. The merchant should have a dedicated weekly cadence for claim follow-up; 18 aged claims means the cadence has slipped or claims aren’t being escalated to Japan Post quickly enough. JPY 628,600 of revenue is tied up in unresolved claims, roughly 5% of weekly revenue on this brand.
- EMS UK and EMS EU dominate the open-claims count (16 of 31). This is consistent with the Exception Rate card’s per-lane reading; customs holds that go unresolved for 14+ days frequently get filed as loss claims, especially when the recipient refuses to pay VAT. The same IOSS / DDP fix that reduces exception rate also reduces this card.
- 10 claims aged more than 14 days are at SLA breach. Japan Post’s published international claim resolution SLA is 30 days, so 14-day claims are not yet breached, but the trend matters; 10 claims at this age mean the merchant is operating with a backlog. Domestic claims are at SLA breach faster (14 days); the one Yu-Pack Cool claim aged >14 days needs immediate escalation.
- Yu-Pack Cool claim rate is structurally higher than dry Yu-Pack. Refrigerated chain disruption (timing, cooler-bag failure) produces damage claims at roughly 3 to 5× the rate of dry shipping. The two open claims represent JPY 18,200 of revenue and likely a much higher customer-experience cost (recipients of damaged refrigerated goods churn at 2 to 3× normal rate).
- JPY 628,600 of unresolved revenue tied up across 31 claims = JPY 20,275 average claim value. The average masks a wide distribution: domestic claims average ~JPY 8,000; international claims average ~JPY 28,000. The JPY 20,000+ average means most of these are full-order replacements or refunds, not partial damage credits. Each one is a customer-experience event worth proactive merchant-side outreach, even before Japan Post resolves the claim.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Open Claims |
|---|---|
| Claim Value | The financial weight. Open Claims is a count; Claim Value is the JPY tied up in those claims. Pair to read both severity and frequency. |
| Exception Rate | The leading indicator. Unresolved exceptions become claims at 14 to 21 day lag. A climbing exception rate predicts a climbing open-claims count 2 to 3 weeks later. |
| Failed Delivery Count | The terminal-state companion. Some failed deliveries become claims (lost in transit, damaged); others become returns to sender. |
| On-Time Delivery Rate | The contractual compliance view. SLA breaches on tracked services often produce claims when the merchant escalates. |
| Returned to Sender | RTS shipments often produce a “non-delivery refund” claim flow on the merchant side; pair to understand the full unresolved-shipment population. |
| Cost Outliers | Per-shipment cost surge often correlates with subsequent claims (the same parcel that needed re-routing or special handling is the one that arrives damaged). |
Cross-connector: shopify.refund_rate | Downstream impact. A backlog of open claims often shows up as elevated merchant-side refund rate because customers escalate before Japan Post resolves. |
royal_mail.roy_open_claims | UK postal peer. Documentation cross-link only. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Japan Post’s own portal: Japan Post Business Customer Portal → Claims and Compensation (損害賠償請求) section. The view is JP-language-primary; English-language summaries are available for international claims via the EMS Customer Service desk. Per-claim status (open / under investigation / awaiting documentation / resolved) is visible per claim. For aggregate views, Japan Post provides per-month claim statistics on a quarterly basis to enterprise contract customers; that report runs ~30 days behind real time and is not suitable for live operational visibility. For international EMS claims specifically, the International Mail Claim portal handles the documentation submission and tracks status; Vortex IQ pulls from the same backend. Why our number may legitimately differ from Japan Post’s portal:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh cadence. Japan Post’s claims-API push is hourly during business hours; the portal refreshes manually. | Vortex IQ leads | The card surfaces newly-opened claims faster than the portal. |
Claim status definitions. Vortex IQ groups OPEN, UNDER_INVESTIGATION, AWAITING_DOCUMENTATION into a single “open” count; the portal lists them separately. | Same total, different layout | Use the portal for status decomposition. |
| Claim filing path. Claims filed through the merchant directly with Japan Post appear here; claims filed by the recipient with their local post (international, recipient-driven) take 5 to 10 days to flow back into Japan Post’s system. | Vortex IQ may lag for recipient-filed | This is a Japan Post backend lag, not a Vortex IQ issue. |
| Time-zone (JST vs UTC) | Boundary days off | Aging calculations are done from claim-open timestamp; for very fresh claims the day-bucket can differ. |
Claim aging threshold. The >7d alert uses business days excluding Japan public holidays; the portal sometimes shows calendar-day aging. | Vortex IQ slightly lower aging during holiday weeks | Reflects Japan Post’s actual response capacity. |
| Multi-claim consignments | Vortex IQ lower than per-event count | The card counts each consignment once even with multiple claim events; the portal shows per-event detail. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
shopify.refund_rate | Open claims often correlate with merchant-side refunds (the merchant refunds the customer before Japan Post resolves the claim) | Some merchants wait for Japan Post resolution before refunding; in that case, refund rate lags claim count by 14 to 30 days. |
bigcommerce.bc_returns_count | Same shape | Returns / RTS that produce claims appear in both. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
The card alerts on>0 unresolved >7d. That seems aggressive. Should I change it?
The threshold is deliberately tight because every aged claim represents one unhappy customer waiting for resolution. On low-volume merchants (under 1,000 weekly parcels) you should rarely see any aged claims and the alert is informational. On high-volume cross-border merchants the threshold catches backlog growth before it becomes operationally visible. Tune to a per-service threshold (>3 aged Yu-Pack, >10 aged EMS) if the binary alert produces noise.
Should I refund the customer immediately or wait for Japan Post resolution?
Refund first, almost always. Japan Post’s claim-resolution SLA is 14 to 30 days; customer patience is 3 to 7 days. Holding the customer hostage while Japan Post processes the claim damages reputation and produces escalations to social media or chargebacks. The right pattern is: refund the customer immediately, file the claim with Japan Post, treat the eventual claim payout as a recovery cash flow rather than the trigger for the customer refund. Most of the JPY 628,600 in the worked example should already be refunded to customers; the open-claim view is the merchant’s recovery pipeline.
My EMS UK / EU claim count keeps growing. What do I do beyond claim filing?
The claims are a downstream symptom; the upstream cause is exception rate on those lanes. Configure IOSS for EU shipments under EUR 150 and DDP for UK shipments under GBP 135 to remove the customs-hold-led claim class. Most cross-border merchants see EMS UK / EU claims drop 60 to 80% within a month of IOSS / DDP setup.
Why are some claims aging past 30 days?
Three usual causes. (a) Awaiting documentation from the recipient: Japan Post requires the recipient to confirm non-delivery / damage in writing for international claims; if the recipient stops responding, the claim can sit in AWAITING_DOCUMENTATION indefinitely. (b) Insufficient label data: claims for damaged or lost parcels need item-level value declarations and HS codes; if the original label was incomplete, Japan Post requires merchant resubmission. (c) Cross-border post operator handoff: international claims are jointly investigated by Japan Post AND the destination-country post; one side’s slow response stalls the whole claim. The fix is proactive escalation at Day 14 with all documentation already submitted.
My damage-claim approval rate is low. Why?
Two structural reasons. (a) Insufficient packaging proof. Japan Post’s claim-rejection logic favours the carrier when packaging adequacy is in dispute; photographic evidence of the parcel BEFORE shipping (taken by the warehouse team) plus photos of damaged contents AFTER receipt dramatically improve approval rate. (b) Underdeclared value. Items declared at lower value to save on insurance pay out only at the declared value; many merchants under-declare to save on customs duties internationally and discover at claim time that the recovery is capped. Declare actual value and pay the customs duty; the claim recovery pays back the difference if anything goes wrong.
Yu-Pack Cool claim rates are higher than dry. Why?
Cold chain disruption is the cause. Refrigerated shipments must move within strict temperature windows; any handoff delay (post office held overnight, missed connection in a sortation centre) compromises the cooler bag and produces damage at the destination. Japan Post’s Yu-Pack Cool service has tighter routing but also tighter time windows, which means delays produce damage at higher rates than dry. The claim rate of 3 to 5× normal Yu-Pack is structural for refrigerated shipping; treat it as a cost of doing business or shift to a dedicated cold-chain courier (Yamato Cool Takkyubin is the closest commercial alternative) for high-value refrigerated SKUs.
Recipient says “delivered but I never got it”. How do I handle these claims?
The “delivered scan but no parcel” claim is the hardest claim type. Japan Post’s investigation involves checking the GPS-stamped delivery scan against the physical address; in most cases the parcel was either left at a Konbini for the recipient (Yu-Pack default for absent recipients) or delivered to a wrong address with similar number. Japan Post’s resolution process: (1) confirm delivery scan location, (2) check Konbini pickup logs, (3) request investigation with the local post office. Resolution time 14 to 21 days. Refund the customer first; if Japan Post finds the parcel was correctly Konbini-delivered, the customer’s refund is on you, but the customer-experience cost of holding it back is higher.
Should I ever NOT file a claim?
Yes for very low-value international shipments (<JPY 1,000) where the documentation effort exceeds the recovery. Many merchants set a JPY 2,000 threshold below which they self-insure (write off as cost of doing business) rather than file. Domestic claims are nearly always worth filing because resolution is automated and fast; international claims below the threshold often aren’t.
The claim resolution SLA is 14/30 days but my historical resolution time is much longer. Is Japan Post slow with my account?
Possibly. Two checks. (a) Are claims being filed with complete documentation upfront, or are they being bounced back to the merchant for additional info? Incomplete claim filings can stretch resolution by 30+ days. (b) Is the merchant filing at the right Japan Post desk? Domestic claims go to the local post office; international claims should go to the EMS Customer Service desk in Tokyo. Filing through the wrong desk delays the routing. If both are correct, escalate via the Japan Post enterprise account team for any claim aged past SLA.