Shopify Shipping Discount Dropping Over Time

[bsbechtel]

Hi all,

Over the past couple weeks, we have seen a big, big jump in our shipping costs with Shopify. In the greater logistics world, there is news that carriers have been offering steep discounts to SMBs to win business over the holiday rush (https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/logistics/ups-fedex-smbs-discounts-unprecedented-levels-delivery-...).

As I started digging into things, I noticed that the Shopify discount for shipping has been steadily decreasing, and our label costs have been steadily going up over the past year. In November, there was a massive jump, despite no announcement from Shopify or the carriers about rate changes. Below is a graph with our average label costs and Shopify discount. Is anyone else seeing these issues?? I've reached out to Shopify support, but so far have not received a response.

Thanks,

Brandon

[dpd11]

The first thing I noticed was a dramatic increase in our over 48" length, which was so insane, I at first thought it must be a mistake. But turned out that was a stealth increase by UPS that equals a 4x increase in most cases. Since then though, I've noticed other weird things. Comparing prices now to a month ago, it's all higher. The problem is, to my knowledge there no way to go back and see what the percentage of discount was on past shipments, so I can't think of a way to compare and see what's from a general increase, or what's from a discount. Also... On the built in shipping, I could swear it used to list the actual discount dollar amount when finishing labels, but... Now it seems like they're just showing the postal ones... Not the UPS. So even on checkout you don't have a way to know what discount you're getting. Which is convenient. The claims of that article are interesting, because I can't even get a UPS rep to talk to me, and FedEx just endlessly goes in circles. I've not been able to get anything lower than Shopify's default discount. If they have in fact done a stealth decrease in discounts, I would love to say class action suit for false advertising, but the "up to blah blah %" would likely save them.

[bsbechtel]

Go to Analytics -> Reports and search for shipping labels. That report will show you your Label cost and Shopify discount for a given time period.

[dpd11]

Ah ha! Thanks, didn't know about that one. I'll have to go over it. Not sure how I can compare. I'd have to find matching zones or something   I guess. But like I said, I'm not sure what we could do about it. I don't think there's anything in writing that guarantees a specific % on certain zones. I think they would be protected with the 'up to' description on discounts. That would allow them to vary it. There's been times I've spoke with the actual humans who handle the claims issues, and sometimes they have insight on other shipping issues. I doubt you will get any meaningful response from the regular support people though.