Caleb Flies recommended to me using a company called Pirate Ship to send bows to folks. I used to be shipping a bow for twenty bucks, but have been paying as high as seventy-five lately! I was skeptical, but went to the website, registered, and created my first shipping label. You gotta be able to weigh the package accurately, AND enter the dimensions, but it's really not that hard to do.
Pirate Ship has you pay them the shipping (and in this case, insurance charges), then you print out a USPS shipping label that has all the pertinent info on it including their QR codes and bar codes. Easy peasy. What did it cost me? $23 and change, that's it.
How come this works, doesn't the Post Office have set rates for postage? Yes, they do. One set for people walking into the post office and another for businesses that negotiate lower rates for large bulk shipping. Catalog companies, online sellers, and the big sellers all get insane discounts that WE THE PEOPLE are excluded from getting. Companies like Pirate Ship open the back door to us so that we can piggy-back on their contracts. I am sure there are other start-ups doing the same, maybe some better, but I'm already impressed with this outfit.
A bunch of other folks have been telling me they have had excellent luck with Pirate Ship, so I went into this with a little confidence. Maybe you all have known about this forever, but maybe this will help others. As the great Canadian philosopher Red Green said, "We're all in this together." And keep yer stick on the ice.
