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 check your settings.

Incorrect Shipping Rates at Checkout

If you use automatic shipping rates from carriers like USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. in your store, at checkout it sends information about the 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 the weight of your products is correct.
  • If you have set any product-specific shipping in your store. For this, go to the store management → 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 the correct shipping origin is specified in your Store management.
  • 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.

No Shipping Method at Checkout

If a shipping method doesn’t appear at checkout, check:

  • This shipping method is enabled in your store management - 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 your 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

Royal Mail: https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/89 

  • 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.

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 management → Shipping & Pickup. Open a method with free shipping rates and check what regions you ship to. If the No limitations option is selected, it means you offer free shipping worldwide.
  • To check if you set individual product shipping, go to your store management 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. If the Free shipping option is selected, then the product is shipped charge-free worldwide.

Note that free shipping which is set up for a product individually applies to all customer locations. You may want to offer free shipping to both at the same time: to certain countries only from the list of countries you deliver to and to certain products only from your catalog. In such a case, you can add a global shipping method with a $0 rate for your free-shipping destination zone and assign this method to certain products only.

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 management inCatalog → Products, open a product editing page, and click on theShipping & Pickuptab. 

Note that the "Fixed rate per item" set to $0 and "Free Shipping" options in theShipping & Pickuptab 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 & Pickuptab.

Flat rate per Item (Instead of Flat Rate per Order at Checkout)

Product-specific shipping options overwrite global shipping rates. So if you set up a fixed per-item fee for a product, it will replace your global shipping settings. In particular, Flat rate per order.

To solve the issue, go to Catalog → Products, select the product, and open the Shipping & Pickup tab. 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 customers will be charged a flat rate per order instead of individual shipping rates.