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 subscription 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 @kevlond,

Thank you for getting in touch. Can you tell me if you have set this up using Shopify's own local delivery feature, or if you are using a third-party app?

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[kevlond]

HI yes I set up using shopify own local delivery.  

When I set up using local by radius it works fine.  However our location is 1 mile from the river thames london so if i increase the delivery radius by over  a mile we have to deliver the other side of the river which is a 2 hour round trip.  Hence why we try to set up local postcode delivery.  

I selected use Postcode.  entered data as RM1, RM2, RM3, RM5, RM6 etc and also tried by just using RM for a range of postcodes.   

However when someone checks out they are to select free delivery, when they are in a different post code area, I have tried this myself by creating an order to my work address and it offers me free shipping and allows for me to pay as free delivery .

I have spoken to Shopify chat and have looked at for me but awaiting response.  Would you be able to assist I have pdf screen shots of everything if helps?

thanks kevin

[kevlond]

ps the chat ref is 19533442 if assists which has the entire conversation and pdf screenshots on, thanks kevin

[Victor]

Hi @kevlond,

Thank you for providing more details and for referencing your ticket number. I can see in ticket #19533442 you are speaking with a member of our technical support team, so I would recommend continuing your conversation with them over email. They are better placed to help you with this as they are specialists on the platform, and as you are authenticated over email, they can view the admin of your store to take a closer look at things. Your ticket is open in my colleague's queue so you can expect a response from them over email.

If you do not hear back from them or run into a dead end, though, please feel free to let me know here.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[St3v3]

Still can't believe that after all this time Spotify will not support regional shipping rates for the United Kingdom. It clear they are not going to do anything about it either even with countless people here asking for it. 

I'm fed up of this missing basic feature costing me money so I will be looking to move away and recommending to others I know that use Spotify and have the same issue to look for an alternative platform to use, one that listens to its customers needs.

[St3v3]

Just to follow on from this, it looks like Woocommerce offers this basic feature as part of their package so I am now building a shop on that platform to see how it looks.

[SidharthKumar]

Not my product delivered and not refund my money

[heygates]

Is there a way of voting for this feature or putting pressure on the dev team to include UK regions with different shipping rates?  I have been on the platform since April (with over 2500+ orders in that time) and integrated with third party couriers.  It has come to light that we are paying massive surcharges when sending to the islands of the UK (which there are many), the Scottish highlands and Northern Ireland.  Dealing with these on an individual basis and invoicing for the additional cost is an administrative burden.  

I don't quite understand the reluctance to add this feature, it is common on other ecommerce platforms.  It would be a shame to move away from an otherwise great platform just because you aren't able to offer this basic feature.

[Victor]

Hi @heygates,

Thank you for reaching out. This issue is one I know many merchants in the UK care about and are dissatisfied with, and I have tried to raise awareness of this issue with relevant parties internally at Shopify. I know this is something our development team are aware of, and I will continue to log all feedback provided to me here in an effort to continue raising awareness of this feature request and how not having it negatively impacts our merchants in the UK. 

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[St3v3]

Hi Victor,

Its all very well you saying you have raised this to the development team, but this has been going on for far to long. You offer it to other countries so it can be done, so should be very simple to do, but Shopify obviously just chooses not to. Not sure why why Shopify wont implement this when there is 8 pages in this thread alone requesting this feature.

As I have said in my previous posts, I am currently building my shop on a Woocommerce platform as they offer this basic feature and have done for quite a while it seems.

This will lose you customers if this is not implemented as a matter of urgency.

[George_Greenhil]

'This will lose you customers if this is not implemented as a matter of urgency.' - it's been 6 years plus 😂 I don't think they've ever considered adding this feature. 

[St3v3]

Didn't realise its been that long!  Clearly they are never going to offer it to those in the UK.

I will push on with building my shop on another platform then

[heygates]

We had two very dissatisfied customers yesterday that we had to contact.  Both said they wanted to cancel the orders due to the extra shipping surcharges we needed to add, and both asked why the shop didn't notify them of this during checkout.  Its embarrassing as a brand.

@VictorDo you publish the development roadmap? I can't seem to find it on the shopify blog.  

[Victor]

Hi @heygates,

We don't publish a publicly available roadmap as far as I'm aware, but we do offer a Changelog which details platform updates as they are made.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Jatz]

Hi Victor,

With all due respect, I’m not sure the Shopify developers are listening to you! I’ve got to say I’m really annoyed after reading this thread...  Looks like these shipping issues have dragged on for several years now!

I’m at the stage where I have designed my whole website on Shopify and I have now gotten to what is one of the last stages of organising shipping for my products and about to launch the business and it is very quickly turning into a nightmare.

It is just crazy that an e-commerce based web design company doesn’t offer any solid and/or viable shipping options for its customers in the UK!! Also crazy that the UK isn’t divided up into separate regions like other counties.

I see “Shopify Shipping” has been promised for a long time now with no updates or promising news what so ever, so I guess the only options are:

1. Use an app (all of which seem to have their faults) where the companies developing these apps seem to be taking advantage of this gap (and rightly so) and charging a small fortune for a valid shipping option. In reality these things should be included free of charge in our Shopify subscriptions like in other countries.

2. Jump ship to another web store company that does offer UK shipping options. It would be a shame after spending so much time developing my website and so far having a good experience with Shopify.

I really didn’t think this would be a stumbling block since it is one of the main foundations of an online store!

My store will be all online and shipping based sending out small and light products worldwide, so this option is essential to sort out and I feel at a bit of a dead end without a simple option that lets me provide good shipping options for my customers, link the order, let me print a label, then provide tracking options for my customers. If anyone could shed light or give advice it would be great. Unless this is fixed ASAP particularly with Brexit looming then there are going to be a lot of problems for a lot of UK Shopify customers and a lot of jumping ship.

Get it sorted Shopify!

[Daviddbx]

Can you not use the Royal Mail Click and Drop integration? It’s free and for what I do, it’s fantastic. Ive tried other shipping methods and found them unusable in comparison.
Splitting the UK up into regions? What shipping company does this? Most I’ve used are UK flat rate for mainland at least.

[Lucelly]

Hi David

I have tried Royal Mail but can’t get it to work at the mo.

Shopify said the app wasn’t supported when I installed it and it doesn’t show on my app list, however the click and drop comes up as a sales channel on collections and products.

Royal Mail says it’s integrated however when I test it, the checkout says no delivery options.

I’m at a loss. I’ve contact Shopify and Royal Mail.

I just find it utterly useless that a basic e-commerce system doesn’t have no the option for the UK 

[Daviddbx]

Persevere with Click and Drop. Once running it really couldn’t be simpler.
Have you created a click and drop account first?

[Lucelly]

Hi David,

Yes account set up and all of the weights etc in Royal Mail.

integration with Shopify set up.

When I test the checkout it just tells me this.

Like I said, my Shopify shop doesn’t show it as an app but it is there as a tick box in collections and in the product as a sales channel yet in the sales channel section of Shopify, the click and drop isn’t there.

Dont know how to sort it.

[Daviddbx]

That’s correct - it doesn’t show as an app.
In click and drop, go settings, integrations. Shopify should show there with a green link status symbol if connected.

[Lucelly]

Yes shows up in green as connected on my Royal Mail account, hence why I don’t know why it’s not working.

At a loss

[Lucelly]

Hi Shopify,

If you know that the UK regions is a popular request and has been on this community for over 7 years, why aren't you looking at resolving this as a standard function.

An ecommerce platform is not a platform if it doesn't have a shipping option.

This should be standard functionality and included in the basis package.

Can you give a date as to when this functionality will be made as standard if you can see from the threads and appreciate that this is a popular request?

[philosophyalice]

Hi Victor

I've just posted a question here 

https://community.shopify.com/c/Payments-Shipping-Fulfillment/Changing-the-text-translation-in-addre...

I think shopify could help UK and European customers more with address formats - the question above is about the address2 field which is set up to reflect the north American format.  I do think that UK / European customers are put off by this as I explain in the above question.  We have also recently been contacted by what.three.words who want us to encourage customers to put their what.three.words in the address2 field, and we're not doing that because we're worried it will make the problem even worse.  Many of our customers are new to online shopping and we are always trying to make things as clear and easy as possible, having American style address formats doesn't help this.

Is there any way shopify can make its address formats more generic?  

I just wanted to cross post this here as I am sure other UK shops will have the same issues.  Feel free to reply here or on the original post above.

Thanks for any help.

Alice

[Victor]

Hi @philosophyalice,

Thank you for reaching out with your question and for detailing the issues that you have. I see in the other thread you referenced another member suggested using your theme's language editor to make some changes, which is also what I'd recommend doing. Whilst this may not give you the exact results you want, it does allow for increased flexibility on what terms appear in the checkout fields, which in turn makes it easier for your customers to fill in their information correctly.

You may have done this already, but you can enable and disable some specific fields in Settings > Checkout:

These fields can be edited in the language editor, so you can change the wording to make them more appropriate for your needs. Please let me know if you need any further assistance with this.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Lagruga]

@Victor (please can you provide an update on this?)

All Shopify has to do is to set up the same way as Canada, US and other countries with similar breakdowns.

UNITED KINGDOM
- ENGLAND
- NORTHERN IRELAND
- SCOTLAND
- HIGHLANDS
- ETC

I bet you guys that if Shopify do this, it will resolve 80% if not more of Sellers problems in the UK. Many of us use flat rates where the price changes based on the area - and that's pretty much it.

What's the problem? Tech? Coding? Politics? Not bothered? Why something so basic as this needs to take so long? Shopify have already done this for other countries so its unlikely to be an issue with coding or have to invest millions in order to deploy.

This is a PAIN for a lot of sellers, please resolve this.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

All Frustrated Customers

[Victor]

Hi @Lagruga,

I completely understand the frustration over this issue, and have seen numerous merchants in this thread and others express their dissatisfaction over the lack of updates on this. I know that this is a costly problem for merchants in the UK (and in the Republic of Ireland), and I have made sure to document all cases of merchant feedback on this issue for our development team to review. Whilst I cannot provide an update at this time, I can tell you that I have personally made an effort to reach out to others at Shopify to make them more aware of this request and the problems this causes for our British merchants.

As a member of our support team my influence in platform changes is limited, but I will continue to raise awareness of this issue as best as I can. Once I have an update to share I will do be sure to do so here in this thread.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Outer_net_]

Just like the dimensional shipping debacle there is a problem and a solution.

The solution is - THERES AN APP FOR THAT 

The problem many smaller merchants cant afford the app add ons to make up for the shortcomings of an ecom platform such as this one that should come with this basic functionality.

If you are selling shoes or bags or sunglasses its all groovy you can just use default package size but what if we wanto send larger or smaller parcels then we can only over or under charge customers. 

People within the shopify community have been asking for feature additions like this for over a decade and people like Victor and others before Victor have been taking the feedback and putting it all somewhere and nothing has happened / nothing has changed! Only a lot more apps have come onto the scene.

With anything theres always a hidden cost and if you sell large volumes of single size items it is fine but for those of us that ship items of varying size to different regions what options do we have?

Shopify should be required by UK law in there EULA to make provisions for different territories - but the counter issue for doing this is happier merchants that will have greater number of options but less app revenue and there for less happy shareholders/founders. 

[Lagruga]

On top of this issue, I have just noticed that tracking for Parcel Force isn't available (here goes another new topic!), there seems to be no native integration.

I mean, most, if not all main carriers should be available by now.

Shopify provides a service to the UK and Parcel Force not available?! Joke!

Cc: @Victor

[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

[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.

[SidharthKumar]

Please Sir Return My Payment

[Amels]

Hi @Victor ,

I wondered if you could help me, I have bee searching for a while now and I can't find an answer.

I have 1 shipping profile and different weights in each of them as the price depends on the weight of the order. 

All my products have weights assigned to them for this reason. 

To give a basic example of my rates

0-100g is £1.30

101g-200g is £2.00

201g+ is £2.95

When I add an item to my basket that is over 201g it only gives the 0-100g price (£1.30) not the price for items weighing above 201g.

Please see screenshots:

Not sure what I am doing wrong.

Thank you

[Daviddbx]

Check its not in kg instead of grammes. My settings seem to switch between the two randomly.

[Amels]

@Daviddbx thanks just taken a look and It's in grams, I'm so confused as to why this doesn't work currently losing money 😞

[St3v3]

There's alot of people in this thread that are losing money, but Shopify just doesn't care and will not resolve it.

Good luck fixing your issues.

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@Amels wrote:

@Daviddbx thanks just taken a look and It's in grams, I'm so confused as to why this doesn't work currently losing money 😞

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