archangel485
Well-Known Member
I want to give you all a tip that will help you save money on shipping and maybe make it more convenient for those of you that, like me, enjoy buying and selling on the forum. I discovered a free service called pirate ship, the website is pirateship.com, and I have used them long enough at this point I feel I can give them a solid recommendation.
After I typed this up and reading what I wrote, it almost sounded like I was selling it, so I felt the need to enter a clarification here. I'm not selling it, there's nothing to sell actually, I'm just trying to help my fellow shooters. I have no affiliation with them whatsoever, I'm just a happy user of their website.
First off, there is literally no cost to use the service and you get shipping labels for discounted rates compared to what you would pay at the counter. Buying insurance is easy and at very fair rates, again far less than buying at the counter. They will even file insurance claims on your behalf, I have had to do this once now. Here's their explanation on how they offer their service free. https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/1860717-how-does-pirate-ship-make-money
I really like being able to compare various services and USPS to UPS BEFORE buying a label, rather than walking up to the counter and feeling trapped into buying whatever service that particular person thinks you need. It's also nice to be able to print my label whenever I have time, and when my package is ready, I drop it off, rather than having to stand in line to talk to the folks at the counter.
Their website interface is stellar, very user friendly and very well laid out. I started out using Shippo, I like pirateship much better, the return address is managed very well and I love the "paste address" box which allows you to paste an entire address (say you copy it from a PM on longrangehunting.com) and it automatically parses it into the various boxes (name, address, city, state and zip). It saves your return address so that's automatically on the label as well, and you can save multiple return addresses. They give you easy options for repeating labels and importing information from spreadsheets etc. Their live chat customer service is very helpful, (a little goofy since they like to talk like pirates, haha) but very good. They even have a feature that if you stop chatting with them (because you get busy doing other things or whatever) rather than the chat ending and you having to start over, the chat ends and gets emailed to you, then you click on your email and you can start chatting again in the same conversation. You may get a different rep, but at least the new rep has the context of the conversation up to that point.
I highly recommend checking them out, even if you only ship 1 package a year, there's really no downside that I have encountered. At first the only downside was that they only offered USPS, but they have since added UPS, they still don't offer FedEx though, but for me that's no biggie.
Anyways, pretty awesome especially for the price of free. Hope this helps some of you.
After I typed this up and reading what I wrote, it almost sounded like I was selling it, so I felt the need to enter a clarification here. I'm not selling it, there's nothing to sell actually, I'm just trying to help my fellow shooters. I have no affiliation with them whatsoever, I'm just a happy user of their website.
First off, there is literally no cost to use the service and you get shipping labels for discounted rates compared to what you would pay at the counter. Buying insurance is easy and at very fair rates, again far less than buying at the counter. They will even file insurance claims on your behalf, I have had to do this once now. Here's their explanation on how they offer their service free. https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/1860717-how-does-pirate-ship-make-money
I really like being able to compare various services and USPS to UPS BEFORE buying a label, rather than walking up to the counter and feeling trapped into buying whatever service that particular person thinks you need. It's also nice to be able to print my label whenever I have time, and when my package is ready, I drop it off, rather than having to stand in line to talk to the folks at the counter.
Their website interface is stellar, very user friendly and very well laid out. I started out using Shippo, I like pirateship much better, the return address is managed very well and I love the "paste address" box which allows you to paste an entire address (say you copy it from a PM on longrangehunting.com) and it automatically parses it into the various boxes (name, address, city, state and zip). It saves your return address so that's automatically on the label as well, and you can save multiple return addresses. They give you easy options for repeating labels and importing information from spreadsheets etc. Their live chat customer service is very helpful, (a little goofy since they like to talk like pirates, haha) but very good. They even have a feature that if you stop chatting with them (because you get busy doing other things or whatever) rather than the chat ending and you having to start over, the chat ends and gets emailed to you, then you click on your email and you can start chatting again in the same conversation. You may get a different rep, but at least the new rep has the context of the conversation up to that point.
I highly recommend checking them out, even if you only ship 1 package a year, there's really no downside that I have encountered. At first the only downside was that they only offered USPS, but they have since added UPS, they still don't offer FedEx though, but for me that's no biggie.
Anyways, pretty awesome especially for the price of free. Hope this helps some of you.
