Route Protection and Tracking

Setting up Route was easy and effortless, and our customers really like it. We weren't sure if it would be something they would use so we leave the toggle off and let them manually toggle it, and we've had a lot of customers add it to their order. It's been helpful for them to track their order and easy for us if any packages get lost or damaged. Show more

Let me start by saying this is a super cool idea and I applaud Route for it. Its something that in concept would be a dream for our company so thanks for dreaming this up Route!!! We started using this App October of 2020, to be honest it felt a bit like a good used car salesperson was selling this to us and everything seemed WAY To good to be true, but we were promised no this is for real. We signed up and it worked amazing for first 2.5 months as insurance. That being said the "used car salesperson" who sold us went dark after we set it up, when we finally located them they got very defensive and seemed hurt that we called them out for not helping us after they sold us the service, and we had 100 percent no support or anyone to reach out to till we continued to be a real squeaky wheel and then were assigned a "Customer Success Manager" "Customer Success Manager" felt a bit like going to the orthodontist where everyone is SOOOO Nice, and has the most amazing teeth you have ever seen and you are like Is this real??? Well like a really good yoga teacher our "Customer Success Manager" was great at platitudes and making it clear they were soooo sorry for the issue and would get it taken care of right away....then would be on vacation for long stretches and not take care of anything... once they returned they would forget our companies issue and we would spend considerable time bringing them back up to speed (mind you this is during a pandemic when our company is short staffed and stressed out trying to make outdoor gear safely in our workshop) And our CSM at Route would get very stressed out that we were frustrated with needing to invest MORE OF OUR VALUABLE time into something we had already told them about. The more we worked with Route the more it almost felt like a needy Child who we were needing to discipline and help shape but at the same time had to tread lightly as to not make them feel bad or to cause them to much work cause then it derailed the whole conversation and things we needed done would not be able to get done. We have been in E commerce 17 years. And as a Small business our customers expect responses from us fast, over the time we have been in business we have seen customers go from a 24 hour email response being seen as fast to them needing it instant through text or chats. When we were sold Route as a solution to our Shipping customer service issues (which to anyone in E commerce we can all agree are lots of the questions we all handle daily) we expected to have quick and reliable customer service from Route as well since they were selling an e commerce experience. Anyone reading this in e commerce can predict when the most shipping is going to be happening and hence the most Customer service needs : ) Well a very large issue for us with Route was Dec - Jan of 2020 much of the Route Team was out getting rad (skiing and doing great things with Family) that I would have loved to be doing myself albeit there was a pandemic and I was stuck triaging to my customers why their claims where not getting processed and my questions to Route where getting auto responses of being out on vacation. While I applaud work life Balance not being able to balance your staffing needs and that is unacceptable, especially for a company to be selling a product to take customer service stress from small businesses and then not really follow through. As I was told my the used car salesperson in our initial sales person "E commerce never sleeps" I could not agree more and as a company servicing that sphere you should structure your claims and customer service people so there is always someone available to help customers 24-7 Late in 2020 Route also changed their terms of use policy very discretely and stopped reimbursing the merchant for the cost of shipping which is very large on our products. This was never publicly addresses in any emails to clients and just processed by changing their website page where they have their terms of use, when I asked about this our rep got very angry and said it was our fault for not paying attention to their terms of use changing. On top of this they also changed how they processed the claims, prior they would sit on them until approved then someone would reorder from route, on their route credit card and we would see a new order with a route billing address to know it was a claim, then without any notice (Aside from the aforementioned change of use policy page on their site) they started putting every claim through as they were filed and we would see an order come in but sometimes paid for other times not paid for, our team would ship an item assuming it was a new order or had been approved as the old route claims worked only to see the claim denied and not paid a week later. To keep training our team to watch for the changes in Route became to much to handle for us. I was told in March of 2021 that this changed back perhaps again so they are reimbursing shipping but honest I don't know anymore and got tired trying to keep up with these folks. Last straw was when we uncovered a glitch in Route. As of March 2021 we have put 1.5 months into working with them on it to have a response that they don't know what is going on. This glitch will overcharge clients double or more in the insurance on occasional orders so we see a $389 Route on one order charges $4.95 for insurance and then a customer reorders and sees insurance of $10.95 or so. I run my business by honestly and while I understood there may be a glitch will say Route did nothing to fix it or address this or to publicly admit there was a glitch to their customers. In fact again they threw this back at us (Actually our customers) for going to fast through checkout and that this was the only way they could replicate the issue and had bigger problems to fix than this, Literally this is what our CSM told us! So apparently its never routes issue, always someone else's fault, and oops don't give them real life feedback or they get their feelings hurt, and they own this huge business but don't have to take the same stress the rest of us business owners do cause, they don't want to? In the days of big tech, VC Capital etc as a USA Manufacturer of High Quality goods perhaps I am just Old School but if I had this much investor Money I would be racing to address these glitches before I continued to push my Used car salespersons to keep collecting more and more accounts, clearly there is not enough roots behind the growing tree above and its becoming more and more unstable. Giving 1 stars instead of 0 only because I do really think Route is onto something but needs to grow up and learn customer service and hard work but then could be a super awesome product and I hope someone with time makes their own shipping insurance company as its a great idea if you have the backbone behind it to support it. In closing I want to note Route has given incentives for others to give them good reviews and this I find dishonest and did not do, instead this is our real life experience Show more

Loved it at first, but I do not like the new way they handle claims and refunds. We got the app to take some of the burden off of our small team when it came to filing claims. Now they have made more work for us on the reporting end. Looking for alternatives. Show more

Everything about their business model is broken. First off, they pitch you that Route is free to merchants. That's not true. They tack on their "protection-product" at checkout, and you pay merchant fees + Shopify commission on their plans. Secondly, the customer experience is awful. Put yourself in your customer's shoes, they order from you, and their package never arrives, despite the carrier saying they delivered it. First thing they do is contact you "hey where's my package?" You send them to route to file a claim, who then says "ok, it's probably stolen, go file a police report and upload it." Ok, when is the last time you filed a police report? Yeah, I didn't think so. So the customer is left frustrated, and harassing you. In the 5 months I used route, they approved a grand total of one claim, while making anywhere between $5k-$9k from us. Instead, move towards self-insuring. Call it package protection, offer it to your customers, and keep the money for a couple times a month you'll need to reship. Route is well funded, with an aggressive sales team, but in the end, their business model makes zero sense. If you'll think about it, you'll know I'm right. Worst of all, I'm pretty sure these guys have been paying off app developers who make competing products. A really well-built app shut down overnight and is now "recommending" route. *caugh *caugh. Show more

At first the app worked great (early 2020) and there was Merchant support and even a phone number at that time but now no phone number and emails take days even a week for a response. Over the last 6 months the claim dashboard has issues and trying to file the claim is broken. Even the customer gets an error message trying to file the claim. If you have multiple items in the shipment, you have to add photos of every single item so for a box of 100 tiles that arrive broken, you have to add the photos 100 times! One claim was denied for a damaged table top saying it was cosmetic. I only give it 2 stars as it has potential but lacks people that can respond to emails (no phone number is available for any help). They rate a F with the BBB which tells it all. Read the reviews there. Show more