Route Protection and Tracking

Edit: A representative of the company has reached out almost 500 days later and resolved this billing issue and offered an additional incentive for my brand. I was told they have undergone new management which i'm impressed about so far. The decision to edit this review was on my behalf not Routes.

Horrible company!! User BEWARE. I have had a canceled credit card for over 400 days and this company CONTINUES to try to charge the account and bill me when I have told this company MULTIPLE times to remove me from their services and stop billing me, yet they continue to bill a card thats been closed for over a year!! Customer service says they can't remove the app until the bill is paid!!! Shopify customer service please take note of these practices and please launch an investigaton! This is ridiculous this company is trying to make your customers responsible for paying a bill after repeated requests to cancel. They send me billing invoices everyday in my email and is becoming harassing at this point! Shopify please please please investigate this company, something is very unethical here! :(

They do not pay legitimate claims. Process is hard for YOUR customers to follow and if YOU (the Shopify Store) resolve the customers problem, Route will not. Route expects your customer to go to Route, not to your store for resolution. No one does that, nor does that make for good customer service from your stores' perspective. If Route mistakenly refunds when they were supposed to place another order the will not correct. Their customer service is very "bro cultured:" unresponsive, repeats their "terms and conditions" rather than listening. HORRIBLE experience. Out of 7 claims over 2020 Holiday season they did not resolve one.

When we first got this app right before the holiday rush, it was PERFECT! Every claim was handled super quick and easily. The pandemic and direct shipping problems with that definitely slowed them down, though I suspect also fast growth because of increased online sales was part of the problem.

We sell mostly lower dollar items, so haven't had a problem getting them replaced or refunded.

I think that there is room for this to be 5 stars again in the future as they catch up and hire more people so that the communication can be better. Overall we have had a great experience, but the slow down in response time has been tricky to navigate.

We had this app in our store for a while before noticing that it was messing with the way our cart functioned. We had a lot customers email in letting us know that when they tried to remove the shipping protection from the cart, it would remove another item. We showed Route this issue and they told us that they would get it resolved. After multiple emails back and forth over months with our account manager Kolby, they just stopped responding and gave up I guess. It is just disappointing to be lead on whilst you could have moved on to another solution. It just sucks to edit all of our FAQs and things now and then start looking for a different solution.

5/12/2020

Update: I am updating our review to 4 stars based on Routes follow-up on the issues in our first review.

Part of our issue is that we didn't spend enough time getting to understand the claims process. Customers can file their own claim using the link in the Route confirmation email. Our customer encountered an error in this process. The screen on his mobile device froze and he could not process the claim. We were unaware that we can also process a claim on their behalf using the Route dashboard in Shopify Apps. As is the case with most unhappy customer experiences our anxiety about getting them taken care of quickly created a tense situation. If we had been more aware of our ability to assist in filing the claim we may not have been as frustrated with Routes initial slow response to the issue. Route did respond within a couple business days which I felt was unacceptable and is one of two things they need to fix. The second being the customer experience with filing a claim on their mobile device. I did ask to be made aware of what created this issue and that it has been resolved. I have not heard back.

Overall the Route App is solid. I don't agree with other reviews about the difficulty installing the code. It was easy for us and Route helped to get it completed in a timely basis.

The service itself is very popular. We sell high ticket goods and nearly all customers opt in to Route.

Route quickly paid the claim and initiated an order through Shopify on the customers behalf. They used a credit card on the system so FGI and the customer were made whole.

I would also like to know more about what is required in making a claim. And what Route does with the carrier in return. What happens to the damaged goods? Who pays to ship them back? How does a carrier receive feedback about damaged shipments so they can improve their ship service? But these are not high priority questions.

If Route continues to improve and the service continues to be popular we'll be along term happy customer.

Kevin Sullivan
CEO
Forever Green Indoors

5/2/2020

UPDATE: After escalating the claim to a number of people I received communication from a Route Executive and another individual who were both helpful and apologetic about the delayed responses to our customer. He offered the customer an option for a refund, or a replacement. The customer elected for a replacement and Route purchased the product on his behalf to settle the claim. This was our first experience with a claim, and although not ideal, it seems to have satisfied our customer so we are satisfied as well at this time. I moved the review up to 3 stars. And I will move it up again if we continue to experience positive improvement with the Route team. I now recommend Route again, with the caveat that it would be a good idea to discuss expectations of claim communication. I'm unsure if the issue our customer faced with the mobile app for making claims has been fixed. We'll do what we can to look in to that. It would have likely avoided much of this review.

###

5/1/2020

Very disappointed with Route. I had high hopes with the service. Our customers were nearly unanimously selecting to pay for the extra coverage. Our first claim involved an unhappy customer who received a badly damaged product shipped by UPS. The customer was unable to file a claim with route. Repeated attempts to contact sales failed. Unsure if the people who sold us this are even working there now. Had some success with technical support connecting us with a product support person who sent a curt email that Route was experiencing "high volumes of claims due to Covid 19". I am really disappointed in Route and we've disabled it in our cart. If the matter is resolved I'll change this review. At this point I'd give it fewer than one star for the money they collected versus the service they have provided. Avoid this app.

They offered me a gift card to write a good review. :-/

That worries me about the quality of other people's reviews.

This has seriously been a game changer when it comes to providing the best experience for our businesses. It's free for us to have it on our site and the tracking app is incredible for our customers (also free). We manage several sites and we have had dozens of customers specifically mention how great it was working with Route, so I'm not sure where these other reviews are coming from.

I was reading some of the reviews - Route has been delayed slightly the past few weeks due to COVID-19 (so have we) but they messaged me proactively letting me know at the start of the month. Just got a notification from them that they're back to usual resolve times this week. If you're on the fence, try it. You won't be disappointed.

It has helped customers feel more secure when ordering knowing their order is covered if lost/stolen

This app is a no brainer for brands that care about their customers. Install was easy. We have seen the majority of our customers add Route Insurance to their carts. Route solves a real problem for us. USPS has inconsistent deliveries at times, packages get stolen, and a host of other issues which are out of our control, yet, impact our ability to delight customers.

We love Route for solving this issue. You should too.

The integration process was easy, and our Reps, Easton and Karlee are super knowledgeable and very quick to respond. We are early in the adoption process however Route has already deflected several issues from our Consumer Affairs team. I expect this number will only grow from here!