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As best as I am aware, in all states in Australia, once you buy it, the risk
is transferred to the buyer even if it has not been delivered by the carrier.
There is the notion in law of what are called Common Carriers and
Private Carriers.
There are test cases for whether a carrier is a Common Carrier or a Private
Carrier but as a rule of thumb, one of those private carrier firms will
most likely pass the test case of not being a Common Carrier and
there will be a Private Carrier.
The distinction is that Common Carriers have more onerous obligations
under law.
A Private Carrier is obligated under whatever terms there are in its
contract and most of the time those fine print terms and conditions will
tend to limit its liability for loss, damage or delay.
Hence most of them offer some sort of optional insurance coverage.
Having said that, Private Carriers have a responsibility to take
reasonable care for the safety of the goods they are transporting and
to take reasonable care to deliver those goods to their destination
and then might still be some compensation under law.
I'm not a lawyer but the receiver's best best is to hope the goods turn up.
Anecdotally if the goods have gone off the radar, a day or two is not very long right now.
Even at an international level, FedEx announced yesterday suspension of its Economy Service from
Asia/Pacific to Europe and these guys have their own fleet of wide bodied aircraft.
Here by comparison we are talking about it coming down perhaps to some guy with a van
whose wife had a baby and everything is still in the van.
In the world of international import/export there are what are called
Incoterms which are the set of rules exporters and importers agree upon
for payment and shipment of goods. Hence when you see terms such
as FOB for Free On Board, which means that once the goods are loaded
by the exporter onto the ship or plane, the rest of the responsibility is
the importers, including if the ship goes down at sea.
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