New shipping rate selection is a Fail by Shopify

[Verdant-Spark]

Not a question, more of an observation. I'd love someone from Shopify to engage in this if possible.

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shipping/understanding-shipping/shipping-rates <- the change here to how 'empty' rates are handled is appalling; previously, if a merchant wanted to set a minimum order below which they wouldn't handle it was straightforward to set a shipping rate threshold.

In a worked example: if the merchant wasn't willing (or able) to ship an order less than, say, 10kg, then the first shipping rate option would start at 10kg. If the customer created a cart which weighed less than 10kg then they wouldn't be offered a rate.  This was a perfect setup.

There appears to be a change, which isn't listed in the changelog, whereby:

If an order doesn't match any shipping rates defined inSettings>Shipping and Delivery, then the order is assigned to the next higher available weight based shipping rate. For example, if there is a 2 kg order and a shipping rate only for 4 kg orders, then the customer is displayed the 4 kg shipping rate at checkout instead of an error message.

This is not a good change, and we'll have a few stores for which they will now be getting orders which they can't ship.  The solution is 'set a stupidly high price for the 'missing' band' at the bottom, but this is not a solution, it's a cludgy workaround.

In my opinion, there should be a separate flag in the Admin as to what to do in the case of a cart not matching on a rate - should it be offered the next rate up or just rejected. Having the rate automatically, without the merchant's knowledge, set at the 'next' step is a very poor change and should be rethought.

[Victor]

Hi @Verdant-Spark,

Thank you for reaching out and for providing your feedback on this. I appreciate you sharing with us some examples where this would be an issue for potential stores and your comments have been passed onto our development team to review. 

While I can't say exactly why this change was made, my presumption is that some merchants will have missed out on potential sales because their shipping rates were configured incorrectly and this change would allow a shipping rate to display at checkout even if they didn't technically qualify. I do understand why this change is not desirable in your eyes and will make sure your feedback is submitted.