How can I prevent double shipping charges on multi-location orders in Shopify?

[JJBDude]

Hey all. I just received an order online and noticed they got charged shipping twice. Instead of £3.99 it was £7.98. I can see the reason for this is because we didn’t have one of the items in stock from our main fulfilment shop so it’s had to take it from another place.

For context we have 3 locations on our Shopify 

- Cambs Lock (main shop)

- Dave Warehouse (his house)

- Jason Warehouse (his house)

The reason we have our house stock on Shopify is because we can’t fit everything in the physical store. We therefore store extra bits at home. However our homes are only a few miles from the shop so if someone did order items from multiple locations it is easy for us to just bunch it up together and send in one package.

Is there a way to ensure Shopify only ever charges one shipping fee (£3.99) regardless of where the product is being stored? I did read a Shopify help article but it was overwhelming for me to understand. Thanks.

link I read - https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shipping/setting-up-and-managing-your-shipping/shipping-profiles/...

Jason

[Ron-Anderson]

Hi Jason,

Unfortunately, there is no way around this when using multiple Shopify locations. When more than one location is called upon to satisfy an order, Shopify will charge per location and blend the rates. 

The reasoning behind this process is that it is (in theory) costing you extra to ship because it is assumed you're shipping the order from multiple locations. Of course, in reality, as is clear from your situation, that isn't always the situation.

The only way to avoid this is to have all of your inventory in one location. Based on what you've described this might be possible, since the "house" locations are close by and only serve to warehouse excess inventory. However if you absolutely need to have inventory tracked in Shopify by location, there is unfortunately no workaround that I'm aware of.

Even if you use a third-party rate calculator like Intuitive Shipping, the issue would still exist. That's because Shopify always splits the order into sub-carts for each location, sends the info to our system, we calculate the rate per sub-cart and send it back to Shopify, they blend each sub-cart calculation into a single combined rate at checkout.

Best regards,
Ron

[JJBDude]

Hey Ron. This was a really detailed response. It’s a shame but thanks for
letting me know.

[JJBDude]

Was just thinking Ron would it be possible for me to set shipping as free for Jason and Dave Warehouse (as you can do a different rate for each location I believe?) and then only stock more expensive products (complete skateboards) which would go over our free shipping policy anyway? As long as I don’t have any small priced products available at those locations (as need to ensure I don’t ship them for free) then I wouldn’t mind the shipping being free.

[Ron-Anderson]

That might work! It's worth setting it up and doing a few test checkouts to make sure it behaves the way you want it to. You can indeed set up different rates by location.

Let me know how it goes! I'm curious to hear if that resolves your issue.

Best regards,

Ron

[sniper2804]

Now in 2023, we seemed to have found a way to avoid this issue using a hacky solution built in our app ShipMagic. This solution only works if you have flat rate shipping.

You can install the app and reach out to live chat support for more information on how to setup the app. 

[AlexMinza]

The "solution" offered is mind-boggling in it's complexity and potential errors when having several locations and shipping rates...

[sniper2804]

Hi Alex,

Please reach out to customer support for help in setting up the app. We do offer complimentary app set ups especially if your requirements are complex. Our support is well trained to handle complex scenarios.

As regards to the complexity, yes the solution is a little complex if you have several shipping rates but that's just because how difficult it is to solve this issue in Shopify. But the important thing is that our solution works as evident from the many reviews mentioning about this issue for our app.

[FG_Adamson_Will]

@Shopify - When can we expect a solution for this? This functionality (or lack of) is preventing us from progressing.

[SarahTMC]

We are still struggling with the same issue since opening our second physical store a few months ago. I spoke to two separate people at Shopify support. I  discussed our options and one being free shipping until this was fixed by Shopify developers. This is to avoid 1. losing sales and 2.irritating/loosing customers. They also said they would reimburse us the costs of offering free shipping until this was solved. I asked for an email confirmation of this and I never received one so I called again and another member of the support team assured me I would be reimbursed. I still have heard nothing further on this and we are receiving constant emails about our double charge issue from customers! 

Please Shopify, do better!! 

[angelo1877]

i think this is crazy that shopify don't fit this in the system - tHE MOST BASIC websites offer flat rate shipping from 2 or more locations - The amount of left baskets we get because of this is shocking and costing both us and shopify money. shame on your shopify fix it - Such an easy fix