Flat rate shipping for order totals with different dropshippers

[Bflaherty03]

So I have set up a flat rate shipping fee of $7.00 for orders $44.99 and under and free shipping for orders $45.00+. Things work fine if the order is over the $45.00 threshold. However, If the items are under $45.00, it is charging $7.00 for each item that comes from a different dropshipping service. For example:

1 product from Automizely that is $9.99

1 product from CJDropshipping that is 9.99 

it is charging $14.00 for shipping instead of the flat $7. 

Here is a screenshot of my shipping settings: 

[June · Accepted solution]

Hi @Bflaherty03, 

June here from Shopify. Thanks so much for including those screenshots! That gives me a great idea of the shipping settings you're working with.

What you're describing is the current expected behaviour when shipping from multiple locations (or in this case multiple apps). We'll see here in our help document Combined rates within a single shipping profile that whenever a single location cannot fulfill an order, the shipping rates for each individually shipped item will be combined (even when they belong to the same shipping profile or shipping zone). In your case, it's probably very likely that customers will (unknowingly) order items that will need to ship from multiple locations.

While this behaviour exists to help merchants avoid overpaying for shipping themselves, I can definitely appreciate that it's equally important to keep shipping rates low enough to be desirable to customers. This is often one of the reasons folks will opt not to use multiple dropshipping apps.

Since you are already using custom flat rates, you are in a position where you could lower the cost of shipping for orders below $45 (so that the combined total cost is more favourable) but I understand it's difficult to anticipate the combinations of items your customers will order to completely account for this behaviour.

Another option would be to use an app like Advanced Shipping Rules or Better Shipping to create more custom shipping rules to replace the default ones you're describing. Keep in mind that both apps will require us to enable third party carrier calculated shipping for your account.

Let me know what you think and feel free to share any questions you have about any of those options. While these are all solid workarounds, I can appreciate that in this case our default shipping rules are not working in your favour, so I have passed that feedback on to our developer team so that use cases like yours can be taken into consideration as we build out new features moving forward. Thanks again for sharing!

[Bflaherty03]

Thank you for your response @June.

I appreciate your detailed information and suggestions to fix the problem I am having. While using another app that has a monthly cost that will dig into my profits is not a favorable option, I will just re-evaluate my shipping cost strategy. I do hope that future updates with the Shopify platform will alleviate this issue. 

Again, thank you for your detailed response.

-Barbara

[June]

It's my pleasure Barbara! I couldn't agree more with everything you've said here.

Please let me know how I can continue to assist you going forward. 

Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead!