Troubleshooting shipping
Troubleshooting shipping issues can be generally broken up into two possible problems: your shipping methods are not showing up at checkout, or the shipping rates are higher or lower than expected. Please double check your settings for possible solutions and feel free to contact us with any questions.
I get incorrect shipping rates at checkout
If you use automatic shipping rates from carriers like USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc in your store, at checkout your store sends information about order (e.g. order weight and dimensions), your shipping settings, origin and destination addresses to the server of a shipping carrier to check if any of the enabled shipping methods can be used to ship the order. In return, the carrier gives the list of available shipping methods with their rates that are shown to the shopper at checkout.
If you think that you get incorrect rates at your store checkout, check:
- if you have set any product-specific shipping in your store. For this, go to store’s admin → Catalog → Products, open details of a product for which you get unexpected rates at checkout, click on the Shipping & Pickup tab on the product editing page and check your settings there.
- whether you’ve added a shipping markup;
- if you’ve connected your store to your own account with a carrier for negotiated automatic rates or if you use our default account with the carrier and receive standard rates.
- if the correct shipping origin is specified in your store’s admin.
No shipping method at checkout
If a shipping method doesn’t appear at checkout, check:
- this shipping method is enabled in your store’s admin, go to Shipping and Pickup section.
- the product being ordered is marked as shippable (i.e. it requires shipping or pickup).
- this shipping method is linked to the destination zone that corresponds with the shipping address you are entering at checkout.
- if this shipping method has been added as a custom table with order subtotal or weight ranges, make sure that the order falls into any of the ranges.
- if this shipping method is not in your disabled list of methods for this product.
- if it’s a shipping method of a carrier integrated with the store for automatic rates, make sure that the total weight and dimensions of products in the cart are within the limitations of the missing shipping method. You can find what maximum weight and size a shipping method supports at the shipping carrier’s site.
For example:
USPS shipping methods: https://www.usps.com/ship/mail-shipping-services.htm
Fedex shipping methods: https://www.fedex.com/en-us/service-guide/us-packages.html
- If it’s a shipping method of a carrier integrated with your store for automatic rates, make sure that the default package size is within the limitations of the missing shipping method.
In case there are several products in the order, and product-specific shipping methods are used in your store, products may have conflicting shipping methods. If there is no shipping/delivery method that can be applied to all the products in the order, your store will show a warning urging the customer to split their order.
Free shipping offered to other countries
Generally, you can offer free shipping store-wide or for certain products in your store. You may have set up both, hence your global shipping settings are overwritten by individual product shipping that is applied to all customer locations:
- To check your global shipping settings, go to your store’s admin → Shipping & Pickup.
- To check if you set individual product shipping, go to your store’s admin in Catalog → Products, click on a product for which you receive unexpected shipping cost at checkout, and go to the Shipping & Pickup tab in the product editing page, then check your settings in the Shipping Rates section.
Free Shipping instead of Flat Rate per order at checkout
Make sure that you haven’t specified free shipping in the settings of the product that you check because product-specific shipping options (such as fixed per-item fee or free shipping) replace global shipping rates.
To check product settings, go to your store’s admin in Catalog → Products, open a product editing page and click on the Shipping & Pickup tab.
Note that the “Fixed rate per item” set to $0 and “Free Shipping” options in the Shipping & Pickup tab are practically the same – both show up as Free Shipping at checkout if the respective product is ordered. If you don’t want to use “Fixed rate per item” for a product, you should switch to the “Use your store’s shipping methods” shipping option in the product editing page, Shipping & Pickup tab.
Flat rate per item instead of Flat rate per order at checkout
It looks like you’ve set a fixed per-item fee in product settings and it overwrites your global flat rate shipping.
To solve the issue, go to your store’s admin in Catalog → Products, click on the product for which you see incorrect rate at checkout, then open Shipping & Pickup tab in that product’s editing page. Switch from the “Fixed rate per item” to the “Use your store’s shipping methods” option there and save the changes.
As a result, your flat rate per order will be used for shipping cost calculation at checkout instead of individual shipping freight.
There is a free “Shipping & Delivery” method
If you use a shipping app from the App market to calculate all shipping costs at checkout, it might happen that the app does’t return any rate because of a technical issue. To save the order, your store shows a special “Shipping & Delivery” shipping method with zero rate in such a case, so that your customer can proceed with checkout.
If you see the free “Shipping & Delivery” shipping method in an order’s details, contact the buyer to arrange for the delivery payment before you fulfill the order. For example, you can send a PayPal invoice to the buyer for the sum that covers the shipping costs.
Still have an issue with shipping
Calculation of shipping rates depends on many options. Generally, in admin area, shipping can be set up in the Shipping and Pickup section and in individual product pages (Shipping & Pickup tab).
If you’ve checked the shipping settings in your store’s admin and still have issues with shipping, send us the following information for troubleshooting:
- Origin and destination address.
- What shipping rates do you get at checkout?
- What rates do you expect to get? Why? What rates do you get in online calculators at your carrier site:
UPS rates: https://wwwapps.ups.com/calTimeCost
USPS rates: https://postcalc.usps.com/
FedEx: https://www.fedex.com/ratefinder/home
Canada Post: https://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1
Australia Post: https://auspost.com.au/parcels-mail/calculate-postage-delivery-times/#/
EMS Russian Post: http://www.emspost.ru/calc.php
- What products do you get rates for? Please send links to them.
Also, any screenshot or step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce the issue would be helpful. We will investigate the issue.