All Collections
Shipping & Postage Questions
Can I use Pirate Ship to send moving boxes?
Can I use Pirate Ship to send moving boxes?

A guide to buying labels for moving boxes and personal belongings on Pirate Ship

Updated over a week ago

You can use Pirate Ship to send anything you like, including moving boxes... as long as none of those boxes contain any items that either USPS or UPS prohibits 😉

If you plan to use Pirate Ship to send moving boxes with your personal belongings, there are a few extra precautions we suggest taking:

Take pictures of everything in your boxes

Before you purchase any labels, the first step to protecting your possessions is to take pictures of your items before and after you pack them. It might sound like overkill, but sometimes packages take damage or go missing during the shipping process, and you'll need photos of your items as evidence to send us in case you need to file an insurance claim.

Assign a proper value to every item in each package and keep an itemized list

Next, you'll want to assign a value to each item in your package. This will help you know how much value to declare per box when it's time to add insurance coverage for your packages.

It's also helpful to create an itemized list of each package you ship that you keep handy. You can refer back to these lists when it's time to take stock of your items once they arrive at your new residence 😊

How do I properly value my items?

Pirate Ship requires a recently-paid invoice and proof of payment (within the last 90 days) to assign a proper value to your item(s) for insurance claims through our third-party provider, Shipsurance.

If you don't have these on hand, you'll need to find and provide a comparable SOLD listing (like on eBay, for instance). Shipsurance will likely use this for a valuation of your item(s).

Purchase insurance for the total value of items inside each box

USPS Priority Mail labels come with $100 of built-in insurance, and all UPS labels you buy on Pirate Ship also come with $100 of carrier liability per package. However, Pirate Ship also lets you purchase third-party insurance when creating your labels, and you can declare much higher amounts for all of your items inside your boxes 👍

Once you know every package's total value based on the items inside, you'll enter those totals as the "Declared Value" when you buy extra insurance for each of your labels.

We always recommend purchasing insurance when sending personal belongings! That way, you're protected for up to the full value you declared in any cases where your boxes get damaged or lost in transit.

Pack your boxes properly

Packaging is important! If you're sending fragile or delicate items, you'll want to use plenty of packing material to protect them as best as you can. Some examples of packing material you can use to shield your items and fill up space inside your boxes are air pillows, packing peanuts, and bubble wrap.

If you send photos of the inside of your packages to the insurance company because some of your belongings got damaged during transit, they may deny the claim if they determine you didn't pack the items properly 🙈

You can read more about the importance of packaging items properly in this Shipping Insurance Terms and Conditions guide.

Drop your packages off directly at the Post Office or The UPS Store®

While you can schedule pickups for your packages through our software, we recommend directly dropping the packages off yourself, and getting them scanned by a worker behind the counter. Knowing that your packages got scanned in will give you more peace of mind, and you'll be able to follow along with your packages' tracking information as soon as you leave 👌

Additional Resources

Any questions? Click the blue chat button to get in touch with our Support Crew 😃

Did this answer your question?