I’m seeing mixed reviews— mainly that it tacks on all these fees/charges after the fact. I need to ship some stuff as cheaply as possible— but I also want it to arrive safely

Edit: link to site

As far as I can remember I haven't ordered anything online in a while, and I have no clue what this could be nor have I ever heard of pirateship. Could someone give some insight on whether or not this could be a scam?? I'm so lost

Arrrr....

With my older car, I buy a lot of parts to make it nicer through guys in group chats that go to junkyards for me, they get the part, box it and I create a label for them.

I just used pirate ship for the first time, and for a 49x33x5 package weighing in at 6 pounds, through the UPS site I was quoted $102. Through pirate ship it’s $49 through UPS.

I was expecting no more than like a 6 percent discount but not 50% !?

How can this be ?

I have so much donated stuff to sell & literally every penny is for charity & I've spent hours trying to figure out all this shipping stuff, but I'm honestly even more confused than before!

If I pick the ship myself option, how do I get the precise ship weight? How do I know what carrier to use? How do I print out the label? How do I make sure it has tracking? Where do I get the perfect sz bag or box? What about all these specifics like priority & express & you have to use the correct packaging & u can't ship this is this package UGH! I'm tearing my hair out over here!

Please PLEASE oh please can some very kind & merciful soul much smarter than I clue me in? gimme a breakdown? I will be forever indebted to you!! & you'll be helping me save the lives & improve the outcomes of innocent companion animals at our local municipal shelter!!

Thanks in advance!

So my account has been flagged for review by security and they're asking for a photo of me holding my ID. Has anyone encountered this problem using this website? I don't feel safe giving them a photo of my face and ID when i've already given them my bank infromation. For the record all I've done is made an account and I haven't been able to purchase anything.

Edit: Ok so I sent them the photo of me and my ID and nothing has happened so far and I was able to make my purchase so they seem pretty legit

2nd Edit (August 25, 2025): Still nothing has happened to my account. Pirateship seems to be legit

So apparently pirateship can sell UPS shipping to people for less that what UPS stores can get it directly from UPS. What gives? Why does a 3rd party get significantly better deals on pricing than UPS? How has this not blown up into a massive class action lawsuit with all the UPS stores against UPS?

New to Etsy, sold out quicker than I thought I would and I’m a little lost on printing shipping labels. Should I go through Etsy for them? Is that too expensive? If my customers paid for shipping am I paying for the label still?? I’ve also heard of pirateship a lot, is that cheaper or just as pricy?

Also, should I stick with buying labels and ink for my printer, or invest in a thermal printer for labels??

I used to be really excited about Pirateship - it seemed to give better prices that the eBay shipping calculator. Just today I shipped a 30#, 20x20x20" box and the rates were identical. And Pirateship only offers Priority Mail or First Class packages, not Media Mail or alternative shippers. For private shipping it IS better that the USPS online rates. Thoughts?

EDIT - OK IT DOES HAVE MEDIA MAIL. Now I know where to look. Thanks

How in the world does UPS expect us to have higher shipping numbers when pirate ship is literally half the price ? Imagine how well all the stores would do if there wasn’t any 3rd party sites that gave labels almost half off. Makes no sense.

Trying to find the cheapest & safest way to ship my work

Hi! I am going to ship out packages soon and was wondering if I am able to use pirate ship on my phone, but then go to the library to use their printer. Or would I have to log onto Pirate ship on the librarys computer and then print it from there, pls let me know!!! Or if there is any other way to get a shipping label easily pls let me know!

Had I shipped this huge box through Mercari, I potentially could have been looking at outrageous adjustment charges for being a notch off on my measurements.

I am also side-eying the charge because I purchased a 20x20x12 box from ups and shipped ups via PirateShip, and they still charged me $1.53 adjustment. But I will take that over Mercari’s fees any day.

Just wanted to highlight the difference in fees on weight and dimensional weight. (Box weighed 9 lbs and I paid for my guesstimated weight of 10 lbs. so no issues there).

I've read pro and con reviews and decided to try Pirate Ship myself. At the point where I was to pay for the label I was creating I tried one payment method which failed. I tried another, it also failed. So I contacted support. At this point, Pirate Ship has my name, address and credit card (albeit single use) information. The chatbot and/or human associate wanted a photograph of the front and back of a government-issues ID. Driver's license, etc. I put the chatbot/human on hold and rang up one of the lawyers at my office who declared that if Pirate Ship isn't a scam operation, they have personal data that can be sold to scammers. The chatbot/human assured me this is common practice for internet commerce. In decades of buying, selling and shipping items on the web, this is the first time I've ever been asked for such information.

I sent a package contains $6800 worth of computers. UPS mangled the box. UPS has agreed to pay the claim, BUT pirateship.com just need to upload my documents since they are the ones that sold the label. They are refusing to do it for some reason and chat is the only way you can get ahold of them. They just keep giving me the same runaround stock answer. So I am out the money because of pirateship.com. They are cheap yes, but you get what you pay for apparently.

hi! so i’m about to order my first second hand american girl doll from a seller on facebook marketplace and it seems the seller is using a website called PirateShip.com to ship it to me (shipping it from America to Australia). I was just wondering if pirate ship is reliable and if people use it often, or if i should be worried? sorry if this is a stupid question i just want to make sure i’m not being scammed or anything

Is Pirate Ship any count? Does it actually save you money when shipping items compared to rates if you just purchased directly from usps? Just trying to save some when I ship.