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                Pirate Ship Reduces Shipping Cost and Complexity

   Adam Engst

   As a Type A personality, I find the process of shipping packages
   stressful. Is my item small enough to put in my mailbox, or must I make
   a special trip to the post office? Would I save money with UPS? Will
   scrimping on shipping fees add weeks to the delivery time? Because I
   dislike extra in-person errands, I try to answer these questions
   online'and the USPS and UPS websites aren't great.

   Last October, I saw a [1]plug for the Pirate Ship service among the six
   weekly recommendations in the [2]Recomendo newsletter written by tech
   publishing veterans Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, and Claudia Dawson.
   [3]Pirate Ship is a shipping platform with an elegant interface that
   allows users to access discounted shipping rates from USPS and UPS with
   no subscription fee. I've used it a handful of times for mailing
   packages, and it has been brilliant. TidBITS contributing editor Glenn
   Fleishman has also shipped hundreds of packages with Pirate Ship over
   the past few years and swears by it.

   Pirate Ship is a clever name, to be sure, and the company has fully
   committed to its schtick, from the big 'Yarr, log me in' button to the
   Support site's heading, 'Lost at sea, matey? Find answers below or send
   us a message.' Even customer service reps reply with a bit of jaunty
   swagger. But while you may occasionally feel as though Groundhog Day
   (the movie) is taking place on September 19 (Talk Like a Pirate Day),
   the banter is charming and doesn't detract from the interface.

   And, oh, what a lovely interface! Click Ship in the sidebar, and Pirate
   Ship lets you jump right into addressing. If you have sent a package to
   the recipient before, it helpfully offers to autofill their name and
   address. Provide an email address, and Pirate Ship can send them a
   message with the tracking number and other shipping details. You can
   even choose when the message is sent, which might be welcome if you
   can't drop off the package for a day or more.

   I especially like using the time-saving Paste Address field, which
   allows you to paste an address copied from elsewhere rather than
   manually entering the data in each address field. Be careful, though:
   if the address contains anything other than a building number and
   street, like a mail stop, make sure Pirate Ship translates everything
   correctly'it sometimes gets confused. Pirate Ship also offers a pop-up
   with alternatives if it can't make an exact match against its address
   database. Check those suggestions, too, since Glenn almost shipped
   packages to the wrong state several times.

   When addressing is done, scroll down to provide package weight and
   other details, and click Get Rates. I mostly reuse shipping envelopes
   and boxes I've received, but Pirate Ship also calculates rates for
   standard USPS and UPS envelopes and boxes. You're warned if your
   package is too big (the maximum length plus girth'twice the width plus
   twice the height'is 165 inches) or heavy (150 pounds). It's good to
   know about carrier limitations before getting too far into the process.
   Extra services include signature confirmation, return labels, extra
   insurance, media mail, and irregular package shapes. You'll also need
   to answer questions about hazardous items and fill out customs forms
   for international packages. You can save your settings if you expect to
   send this package repeatedly.

   When you click Get Rates, Pirate Ship suggests the best option, but
   links let you switch to the least expensive options for USPS and UPS. A
   tip at the bottom of the currently selected option tells you how much
   more the other carrier is, which you might choose if it means a free
   pickup at your home instead of a trip to drop it off. Clicking the
   downward-pointing arrow shows you all the options, in the event you
   want to pay more for faster delivery.

   For each option, Pirate Ship shows estimated delivery dates and how
   much you'll save over the retail cost at a counter. USPS and UPS offer
   slight discounts for printing labels online through their sites, but
   it's a small savings. Pirate Ship has negotiated corporate-level
   discounted shipping rates of up to 89% off retail and passes most of
   those savings on to customers. For shipping something heavy, Glenn has
   seen international shipping prices that run about $200 on UPS's site,
   while Pirate Ship's rate was about $60.

   That slight arbitrage allows Pirate Ship to avoid the monthly
   subscriptions that make no sense for all but high-volume
   shippers'Stamps.com charges $19.99 per month plus postage, for example.
   (On the flip side, Stamps.com net rates can be lower than Pirate
   Ship's, and Stamps.com lets you print standard USPS stamp-like postage
   in addition to USPS and UPS package shipping labels.)

   Once you've selected a service, scroll down to see the total and buy
   the label. Pirate Ship lets you pay using a debit or credit card, of
   course, but you can also pay using PayPal or connect your bank account
   for automatic ACH withdrawals and save 3%'likely worth it for a
   higher-volume shipper. You can also fund your account with more than
   you need to reduce the number of receipt emails.

   If you're just testing the waters, you can start by getting a rate
   quote from the Rates page. You provide the destination country and
   postal code, choose a type of packaging, enter the package dimensions
   and weight, and review options. The information is the same as when
   creating a label, but it's presented in a way that makes comparison
   easier. If you see a rate you like, click Ship Now to create a label.

   The Ship page also lets you [4]upload a spreadsheet or import from
   [5]integrations with a wide variety of ecommerce hosts like Etsy,
   PayPal, Shopify, and Squarespace. Once, for the Finger Lakes Runners
   Club, I needed to send race medals to 11 people who hadn't received
   theirs at the race. There were two couples on the list, so I had nine
   packages to send, two of which were twice as heavy as the others. Since
   I had to extract all the name and address information from our race
   registration system anyway, it was easy to create a spreadsheet with
   all the details'including different weights'and generate nine labels in
   a single order. That was far more efficient than creating nine
   individual labels and submitting nine separate credit card expenses to
   the club's bookkeeper.

   The End of Day, Schedule Pickup, and Print Selected Labels buttons on
   the Ship page are aimed at helping higher-volume shippers. The [6]End
   of Day button lets you print an entire day's worth of USPS labels and a
   single barcode that lets the postal worker scan them all in at once.
   [7]Schedule a Pickup lets you request a pickup, which is free from USPS
   (and you can tell them you'll leave the package in your mailbox, which
   is what I do for nearly everything) but costs $25 from UPS. [8]Print
   Selected Labels is helpful if you've created many labels and want to
   print them all in a batch.

   Pirate Ship optimizes paper usage and will print labels two-up on an