When the U.S. Postal Service advertises that its Priority Mail service comes with $50 of insurance included, you might assume that it comes with, well, $50 of insurance. But that’s not always the case, and the National Advertising Division (NAD) has asked the Postal Service to make more clear the limitations and exclusions.

While the Postal Service disagreed with the NAD’s determination that the insurance claim was misleading, it has agreed to make changes. The issue is that while $50 insurance can be included with Priority Mail postage, which starts at $5.60, it comes with quite a few catches.

The issue came to light when a consumer’s Priority Mail envelope containing a $100 gift card was lost, but she only received $15 in compensation plus the postage she paid, according to NAD, the advertising industry’s self-regulatory body operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

It turns out the Postal Service website has asterisks next to the words “$50 insurance included in Priority Mail service.” The asterisks noted that to qualify for the $50 in insurance a package must have a tracking barcode. However, it turns the Postal Service has a lots of other rules about what you can claim and what you can’t with that insurance. Among the rules is a $15 cap on gift card reimbursements.

But that wasn’t made clear, said NAD. “Based on the information available at the advertiser’s website at the time of the consumer’s purchase of the Priority Mail service, and absent any information in the record that would otherwise alert the consumer to restrictions that would apply to the insurance coverage for her Priority Mail package, NAD determined that the message reasonably conveyed by the webpage is that the consumer would be reimbursed $50 for her lost shipment.”

via How Priority Mail insurance falls short – CBS News.