Losing money on shipping - Shopify is undercharging

[FandeaFabrics]

We are losing money on this and I have contacted shopify multiple times and they are unhelpful. 

This has been happening only since 1/1/22. It WAS only happening with Priority Shipping (not the flat rate just Priority by weight). Contacted shopify back around 1/19 after we had several examples. They stopped emailing back for more info 1/20/22. And no contact from them since. We ended up turning Priority shipping off as an option at check out.

But now we are having this issue with First Class mail. Most recently, a customer was charged $5.68 and we are being charged $5.96 to ship the package. SAME WEIGHT. We have a $1 built in to cover shipping supplies so it should have charged this customer $6.96. This is just one example. We are losing money and I can't get anyone on the phone. I have Googled and read through forums for a similar problem and have not found one.

We are using Shopify's Calculated Shipping Rates, we have not changed any settings at all on our side. 

[Ron-Anderson]

Hi @FandeaFabrics,

Shipping rates provided by carriers can sometimes fluctuate. Most carriers have a fuel surcharge built into their shipping rates, which is updated daily based on fuel prices. We will often see rates fluctuate by about $1.00 from day to day because of this. If your orders are being fulfilled several hours, or even a day after they were placed, you should anticipate slight discrepancies between what your customer paid at checkout and what you're paying to print the label.

Another reason may be discrepancies between your shipping calculation settings and fulfillment settings. This could be as simple as product weights. Shopify may round up or down if the weight value is below a certain threshold, which may end up being different than how it's calculated at checkout.

In either case, a difference of $0.20-30 isn't unusual in many cases, although understandably, it adds up to lot when you have many shipments over time. To offset this loss, you may want to build in a $0.50-1.00 'handling fee' buffer into your carrier shipping rates to offset the loss. While it does mean customers may have to pay slightly more on a single purchase, it'll save you from losing money on every shipment.

Best regards,

Ron

[FandeaFabrics]

This is not the reason at all. I called and was told Shopify had a glitch when we purchased the label. So we lost out on technically $2.28. Because it should have only cost us $4.68 to ship. Orders placed directly on either side of this one were not affected. But we looked at buying shipping labels later that same day. We had an order placed 4 minutes before this one and one less than 10 minutes after. I understand shipping rates fluctuate but not this much in less than 24 hours. We have lots of preorder sales and ship months later and have never had this big of a discrepancy before.