Said Beautifully review for Route Protection and Tracking

Aug. 10, 2021

We heard about Route through ShineOn during a FB live session or zoom or something like that. We were made to understand that there was no cost to merchants and 1% of the cart value to be paid by the customer which seemed like a bargain based on what the big-boy carriers charge for "insurance" and how cumbersome their claim processes are. We couldn't see a downside. So we pulled the trigger. We got very good onboarding assistance but then had to do a ton of manual work when we had some shopify updates to our store. It took a lot of time and frustration to finally get Route operational on the store. Once it was there, we had about 50% take rate on customers leaving the switch on upon checkout. After several months, we have had a single customer claim and it was handled beautifully. Based on that, we decided to go the extra step and add route at no cost to the customer for every item in our store. It was a customer service and loyalty based strategic decision -- it took only 2 emails to Route and it was all done on their side. I had no additional work to do to our store. Simple, stupid, easy, breezy. When we received the first invoice after the switch, I was disappointed to find that our charge wasn't 1% of the cart as had been represented on the ShineOn session we'd attended but "up to 2%" of the cart and we're definitely being charged "up to 2%". Yes, when I looked today to read all the fine print, there is a statement regarding "cart value up to 2" but that wasn't what had been represented at the initial presentation. Logic would seem to say that when Route is assured of a steady stream of revenue from an e-commerce store having chosen to provide their product/service on every sale that the rate would be at the low end, not even at the middle and certainly not on the high end. Sort of similar to how credit card processing fees, tiered volume/quantity discount pricing or wholesale vs. resale pricing works. Instead it feels kind of like being an established cable or cell phone customer and not getting the best deals like a new customer gets. Long story short for Route: it's a customer satisfier, it takes a layer of customer service work away from my day to day and it's relatively simple to get functional on a Shopify store. I just wish their "best" pricing applied to shops who gave them the vote of confidence by putting their protection on every order. So room for that elusive 5th star if they get their pricing in order...