Pirate Ship: CheapARR Shipping

If you use it wisely it can benefit you greatly but you must monitor what is happening always. They do have very good usps & ups rates. Holiday surges can be a bit much. Insurance (shipsurance) is in added choice but shipsurance company can be very difficult to deal with once we go above anything that is $200 in value. They have a very long list of regulations (all responsibility is solely on seller!) and pirateship have not guided us very well. You MUST make sure to know all the regulations if you would like to insure something of great value as shipsurance will try to find the smallest of reasons why not to pay (even if you did an amazing packaging job and it is evident UPS is at fault). I cannot repeat this enough! Another point to be on the lookout for is "label cost adjustment", especially with UPS, it took me a good while to understand that even post delivery UPS sends some package measurement & weight adjustments that are wrong and you will be automatically charged more. We have very specific box dimensions and ups keeps claiming the dimensions are different than those we carry and we have to dispute the "adjustments" on a regular. You can see that in your "reports" section. make sure to monitor it. Make sure you know what is needed also for small claims up to $100, they are good with those for lost mail, damaged mail, etc. Never had an issue with them and pirateship team has been helpful with that. All in all it is a fair service but not for anything that is above $200 and you must always monitor the label cost adjustments weekly. Hope this helps others.

Update:
so for a while I was thinking to change my review for the better since the rates were much better and $100 coverage of items was included in basic shipping and also UPS was added as an option, was really "smooth sailing" Arrrrrrhhh....no issues for a long while until a package was damaged, previously I filed claims and the ones under $100 coverage were easy to settle. Have not filed a claim in a very very long time. I submitted everything that is required and did it with the system not with the agents, the claim was not being processed (I already send a replacement to my customer because we take care of our customers promptly) so I contacted an agent who told me it is 1-2 weeks for processing a claim (meaning to get an initial response not approval). I now understood that shipsurance in not the only problem, it is pirateship too, and I will explain. The customers are require to hold on to all the packaging and damaged items because after a few weeks they come up with requests that should have been cared for upon happening, obviously it is an issue but those are the policies so you cannot argue about it, by delaying the process of the claim there are less chances for the claim to be approved and we end up disturbing our customers. Also, I work with other 3 party services that resolve any issues within no time. So the agent was rude, and when I told him that in the past it was not like this with pirate ship and that I cannot work with 1-2 weeks for processing a simple claim and that other companies offer better services so I will have to choose them for these complication he replied that he was "happy to help" and sent a smiley emoji. I was shipping mostly with pirateship but since the support for customers is an issue when an actual problem occurs I will have to stop, too bad, I really liked using their services, but occasionally there are issues and support is needed. We too offer it to our customers but with pleasure.

The app is not horrible, But has three issues that pushed me back to using Shopify shipping.
1. this app does not import your product weight forcing you to always modify your shipping weight. Shopify, all my products and shipping material have accurate weights so there is nothing to modify.
2. Have to navigate multiple screens to get to the point of printing your shipping label. Shopify, it's all in one screen with a pop up for your printer.
3. Tested 5 packages and Shopify and Pirate Shop were 100% the same shipping rates.
In summary, because of the multiple screens, modifications and same pricing the logical choice for me was to go back to Shopify for my shipping options.