← All guidesPricing a day you lost waiting for a delivery that never came
A package marked delivered that never arrived, a four-hour window nobody kept, three reschedules — the classic wasted-day claim.
What usually goes wrong
Delivery and in-home service failures are the purest version of a wasted-time claim: the whole cost is the waiting. A package marked delivered that never arrived, an installer who does not show, a redelivery that fails the same way, a replacement that takes three weeks.
What time counts
Count the window you were required to hold open, not just the minutes on the phone.
- Each delivery or service window you stayed home for
- Time off work taken to be present
- Calls and chats reporting the failure and arranging redelivery
- Trips to a pickup point, locker or depot
- Time filing a claim for a lost or damaged item
What costs count
Anything the failed delivery forced you to spend.
- Documented lost wages for unpaid time off
- Buying the item again locally because the delivery failed
- Return shipping or restocking charges you should not have owed
- Expedited shipping paid for a delivery that arrived late anyway
How to document it
Screenshot the tracking page, especially any incorrect 'delivered' status, and save the confirmed appointment window. Keep the claim or ticket number and note every reschedule with its date.
Where to escalate if they ignore you
- The retailer rather than the carrier — your contract is with whoever sold you the item
- The carrier's formal claim process for a lost or damaged parcel
- Your card issuer's chargeback process for goods never received
- Your state Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau
None of these guarantee payment. What they do is put a specific, dated, itemized record in front of someone whose job is to make it go away.
Put a number on it
People in this situation typically log around 5 hours. At $30/hour, plus costs like unpaid time off taken to wait or rebought item, that adds up fast.
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