Regional Support: Shipping (UK)

[Victor]

Learn more about handling shipping and fulfilment while running your Shopify store in the UK.

This thread is part of the Regional Support threads offered for merchants in the United Kingdom. To see which other topics are available, you can visit the UK hub here.

Merchants based in the United Kingdom can offer both manual and third-party carrier calculated shipping rates to their customers at checkout. This second option allows UK merchants to link their FedEx and UPS accounts to Shopify and offer live rates from these providers at checkout.

Please note that the live rates can only be enabled if the merchant has the carrier calculated shipping feature enabled, which is a standard feature of our Advanced and Plus plans. However, this feature can also be added to a merchant's store for an additional cost of $20 USD per month if they are on the Shopify plan. Merchants on the Shopify plan can instead have this feature enabled at no additional cost if their subscrition is paid for on an annual basis. If you’d like to add this feature to your account, please contact our support team.

Outside of the integrated options of FedEx and UPS, there are a number of third-party applications that allow UK merchants to offer live rates from other shipping providers. Some apps will also allow you to buy shipping labels for different providers in the UK. These include:

• Royal Mail Shipping Extension (includes live rates from Royal Mail that appear at checkout).
• Starshipit Shipping & Tracking (includes live rates from the likes of DHL and DPD at checkout, as well as the ability to buy shipping labels from numerous carriers, including Royal Mail).
• Zenstores - UK Shipping App (includes the ability to buy shipping labels from numerous carriers, including DHL, DPD, Hermes, Royal Mail and Parcelforce).
• Multi Carrier Shipping Label (includes the ability to buy shipping labels from UK-based carriers including Royal Mail, Parcel Force & DHL)

Royal Mail also offer their Click & Drop app, which can be installed in the form of a sales channel in the Shopify admin. This app will allow you to easily buy and print Royal Mail shipping labels for your orders. You can refer to Royal Mail’s setup instructions to install the app in your store.

If you’re looking for more information or direct assistance with any of these apps, we recommend contacting the developers of the app directly. The developers build and support these apps and their contact information can be found on the app’s page on the Shopify App Store.

If you have a question or comment to make about shipping when based in the United Kingdom, please post it below.

[Victor]

Hi @Lagruga,

Parcelforce is not yet an integrated shipping courier, although I know it is widely used in the UK. I'll be sure to log your feedback on this with our development team. In the meantime, you can choose "Other" as the shipping carrier when fulfilling orders with Parcelforce and can manually add the tracking number and URL to be sent to your customers.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[hcnewhouse]

Hey Shopify,

We love your platform, so much so we run 2 stores on it.  Our main niggle is, as other users have indicated, the ability to have different shipping rates across the UK. Most couriers charge surcharge for shipping to Islands, Highlands and to Northern Ireland.  In order to maintain competitive generally we make a loss on orders shipped to these destinations.  Sometimes the shipping surcharges ate over 100% more than the standard UK shipping rates, depending on the courier.  

This may become more important to UK store owners after the Brexit transition period finishes because there's of the rules about movement of goods over the Irish sea.  

Any assistance on this issue would make your platform amazing!!!

Thanks

[Victor]

Hi @hcnewhouse,

Thank you for reaching out and I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the platform, but I recognize that this issue is problematic and can be costly in the scenarios you've referenced. As you may have seen, this is a heavily requested feature from British merchants and has been mentioned numerous times in this thread, and I have continuously logged the feedback shared here with our development team (and I will do the same with yours). This is something I have advocated for internally and will continue to do so moving forward. I will be sure to post any updates in this thread if and when they come.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[George_Greenhil]

Hi @Victor, I honestly can't believe this issue of UK shipping has still not been sorted out 5+ years on. It's almost 2021, come on, sort it out Shopify. 

[bennaylor1]

it is not currently possible to split the United Kingdom zone into different countries/ regions (e.g. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and the Channel Islands). 

Why??

You are able to do this for the Philippines, India, UAE, Indonesia, Japan, China, USA, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Eygpt, Nigeria, South Africa, Guatemala, Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, HONG KONG, it's a city ???

As we can see from the list above you know how to do this, it would be really good if someone could explain why this has not been done for the UK, it's your 8th biggest mark and the only way it can be taken is you don't really care about your UK customers or does someone at Shopify have a UK shipping app?? 

If you could explain it would be really helpful, as you feel its need for a city of 7.5 million people but not a country of 66.65 million people, whoever is deciding the priorities of your tech team may need to be replaced. 

[lolly2020]

@Victor 

It's very important now to be able to split UK into zones, with the brexit Northern Ireland can taxed like EU, unlike the rest of UK. We are an Irish business and we need to have separate tax and shipping for Northern Ireland compared to the UK . This is a must now, and this needs to be escalated ASAP.

[St3v3]

I still dont understand why this has not already been actioned. It is in place in other countries yet the UK still doesnt get this option.

It is getting beyond a joke now and clearly @Victor whatever you are doing to 'escalate' this is not working and something else needs to be done to finally get this resolved.

[SidharthKumar]

Your company is froad cheater ,lier,fake

[George_Greenhil]

@Victor With Brexit now completed, the ability to separate Nothern Ireland from the rest of the UK is now a feature that needs to be added quickly. Otherwise, Shopify merchants will not be able to easily comply with new regulations from the Brexit deal. 

[lolly2020]

@Victor 

Still waiting to hear back from you. This needs to be prioritised !!!

[lolly2020]

@Victor 

Still waiting to hear back from you. This needs to be prioritised !!!

We will keep bumping until this is prioritised

[EZB]

Is there a petition feature on SHopify forums to request the UK be split out into regions for shipping and tax purposes ? I'm sure there are a few thousand customer who would benefit. 

[lolly2020]

I have started a new request/question - link below, since this is coming up as solved

https://community.shopify.com/c/Payments-Shipping-Fulfillment/United-Kingdom-split-out-Zones-Norther...

[Lagruga]

@Victor what's the best and quickest way in your honest opinion for Shopify to hear our concerns/requests? No disrespect to you (or any colleague of yours who has tried) but your team seems to not be paying much attention to you which directly affects us (the paying customers). This topic has been going for years and NOTHING has been done about it. I am sure all of us appreciate you trying but I think it needs to go beyond that now.

I think a lot of people in here have had enough and it seems that posting information in the forum may not be the most effective way to get our point across. Specially when moderators mark topics as SOLVED, you're throwing salt in the wound.

Please advise.

Thank you.

[Victor]

Hi folks,

The issue with the inability to split the UK shipping zone is one I know many of you are frustrated with, and I'm aware that this is something that has been requested for some years now. Whilst I have continued to submit feedback as I do with other requests and frustrations we come across, I have also reached out to other individuals at Shopify to further try and raise awareness of this issue. As a member of the support team my influence is of course limited, but I have advocated for this one issue in particular as I know for British merchants this issue is problematic.

I know it feels like nothing is happening, and that your requests are being ignored, but I can tell you that our development team are aware of the problem and I personally hope we will see a change before long. I will continue to advocate for this issue and as soon as I have more information to share, I will do so here.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Peng15]

I would like to add my request to the list for UK to be separated out with Northern Ireland. Its vital to my business as its illegal at the moment for me to ship to Northern Ireland without tests that cost 20 times the product. 

What is best current work around and please can I have an idea of how long before this will be available

[lolly2020]

Any Update shopify !!

[EZB]

What a joke! 

12 pages of replies and Shopify has its head in the sand. 

[BlakeAndTate]

Please add my name to the list. This is costing many businesses money, effort and resources having to find workarounds to what feels like a routine change that should have happened a long time ago. Unfortunately the only way these things get prioritised is through complaints or people leaving the platform.

On another note, I'm currently using Parcel2Go app to ship my goods. Can anyone recommend whether I should try using a Courier app or something else? It works quite well, and I like having different options of numerous couriers to choose from (especially when somebody buy from Highlands, NI etc), but the customer service is dreadful. e.g. If Parcel is delivered to a neighbour it takes them 7-14 days to let me know which neighbour which isn't ideal to tell me customer! 

Any suggestions or recommendations would be great. 

[UnSealed]

Hi Victor,

I am very new to Shopify and in need of some help/advice please..... My online shop has physical products (Eco products) that can be shipped UK only as well as loose food and liquid refill products (Refills) that are only available for local delivery and in store Click and Collect. 

I have set up 3 Shipping categories, Eco Home small (for items that can be posted by Royal Mail large letter service), Eco Homeware (for items too large or heavy for Large letter service) and Refills ( for items that are not to be shipped) and have put the relevant products into those categories.

If a customer only chooses items that are Refills check out works fine.. however... if the customer has chosen Refills as well as Eco products the local delivery and collect in store options are not available, only normal shipping.... Also if products in the Eco Home small shipping category and the Eco Homeware category are chosen the postage is being added together from the 2 shipping categories. I thought it would default to the larger cost not add both costs together....

Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated - thanks Kayleigh