When purchasing a label in Pirate Ship, you can select a Ship Date for up to 7 days in the future 🎉 It's a great option when you know you won't make it to the Post Office for a while, or just want to allow yourself that extra wiggle room!

Generally, you can still use a label a few days after the Ship Date - but, it is up to your local postal worker's discretion, so make sure you're super nice to them about it 😉 That said, USPS doesn't mind if you try to use the label earlier than the chosen Ship Date.

If you plan to use your label more than 2-4 days after the Ship Date, your Post Office might still accept it, but it's not always likely 😓 We always recommend playing it safe by requesting a refund for that label, and creating a new one with the updated Ship Date.

UPS® prefers that you use your labels as soon as possible after purchasing them. 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 🙈

If a UPS label has been sitting without being used, the best practice is to simply recreate it and pay for a new one! Keep in mind that our software automatically refunds labels after 28 days. If your UPS label is auto-refunded, you'll need to recreate that label and not use the original refunded label when shipping out your package.

If you use a refunded 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 👍

It's important to remember that Pirate Ship will automatically refund you for any USPS or UPS label purchases that don't have tracking updates after 28 days 💰 By that point, you will want to recreate and repurchase it.

Note that this only applies to any prepaid shipping labels! Our Pay-on-Use USPS Return Labels are valid for up to 90 days 😃

Any questions? Our Support Team is happy to lend a hook!