In Pirate Ship, you can change your Ship Date and when your Tracking Emails will be sent.
Selecting your Ship Date
Both USPS and UPS allow you to set your ship date on Pirate Ship for up to 7 days into the future 👍
Scheduling your Ship Date: To schedule your Ship Date, fill out the recipient's information and package details and click GET RATES.
Before you click the "BUY LABEL" button, click the "Ship Date" drop-down menu and select your desired date. Here's a screenshot of how that looks:
How long can I wait to ship my package?
USPS shipments: USPS usually allows you to ship your package as long as the Ship Date is within a few days of when you hand them the package... however, it is at each employee's discretion.
USPS can technically refuse to ship your package if you wait too long! The best practice is to get your package into the mail stream as close to the postmarked date as possible.
UPS shipments: UPS prefers that you use your labels as soon as possible after purchasing them.
Old UPS labels may be routed to Overgoods: If UPS considers a label too old to use, there's a chance that the package will be routed to a UPS Overgoods location, which is a facility where UPS holds packages that are unable to be recovered 🙈
Recreating old UPS labels: If a UPS label has been sitting without being used, the best practice is to simply recreate it and pay for a new one!
Pirate Ship auto-refunds unused labels after 28 days
Whether you're shipping with UPS or USPS, our software automatically refunds labels after 28 days.
If a label has been auto-refunded: If your USPS or UPS label is auto-refunded, you'll need to recreate that label and not use the original refunded label when shipping out your package 😉
Don't use auto-refunded or duplicate UPS labels: If you use a refunded UPS label or if you use a label more than once, that package will get sent to a UPS Overgoods location and will be unable to be recovered.
Rates may change depending on the Ship Date you choose
Different rates for different Ship Dates: When purchasing labels, you may see different rates depending on the day of the week it is 😅
For instance, UPS adds a "Saturday Processing Fee" surcharge to a label if UPS accepts it into its network on a Saturday.
If you're seeing rates that include Saturday Processing Fee surcharges, changing the Ship Date to a weekday and dropping off/scheduling a pickup for your package on that day won't incur that surcharge.
Learn more about the UPS surcharges you may see on Pirate Ship.
Related resources: