United Kingdom - split out countries, i.e. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

[DeanLindley]

Hi there,

I'm trying to restrict certainly countries within the UK but this doesn't appear to be a standard shipping settling in Shopify which I can't believe.

Am I correct?

Dean

[JamesMcC]

Hi George,  I’d try again or refresh your screen.

 I literally selected “Setting” (bottom left corner)  => “Shipping and delivery” => “Manage Rates”... scroll to bottom... “Load More Zones”... scroll down to UK (I had previously Uk there without shipping rate)... select “Edit zone”... scroll down to UK and select and you should now have the 5 regions/countries. 

Failing that maybe reboot your computer/web browser... and try again.

Hope it work,

Best Regards,

James

[gamesonline]

I got this today

The cost to ship within the United Kingdom after Brexit can vary greatly depending on where you are shipping. Historically, you have only had the option to set one shipping rate for all buyers across the UK. Now, when you set domestic shipping rates you can create a distinct rate for each of the following:

• Northern Ireland
• Scotland
• Wales
• England
• British Forces

Learn more about setting up shipping zones. To edit shipping rates, or add or remove each constituent country visit your Shipping and Delivery Settings:

Looks like it is on now just about to test it now

Though looking at the above Scotland is a bit vague as it should be split in to Scotland then Highlands and Islands so i cant set my pricing correctly here either.

Wished they would just grab someone from this country and say hey dude what do we need to do to fix this for you.

[Chris010101]

Wow have they actually done it?

[gamesonline]

A piss poor job though they haven't even done Highlands and Islands so Scotland is a blanket approach. Also no Isles of Scilly or Isle of Wight etc. 

[JamesMcC]

Hi Nick,

Splitting out the areas would be super... currently we have to cease supply Northern Ireland because of this.

Development Request:
We are an SME selling from Ireland (26 counties) and would like to be able to sell to Northern Ireland but not the UK as we currently cannot sell to the UK and the associated cost are prohibitive even if we wanted to. We are legally still are allowed to sell to Northern Ireland can you please confirm how with set up the shipping rules to accommodate this. Equally is it possible to isolate England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland into different zones as the shipping costs are different from our providers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

James

[lolly2020]

With Brexit Northern Ireland is a dual tax country ( which Shopify should know this at this stage), It can be taxed like an EU Country or UK Country, we are  in Republic of Ireland and we will need to tax Northern Ireland like an EU country for us to be tax compliant so it means different tax and shipping rate for Northern Ireland compared to GB, Wales and Scotland (i.e. rest of UK)

No app at present will sort this issue

You have so many countries in zones and as of yet despite over 5yrs request your company have refused to zone UK, at a bare minimum Northern Ireland should be separated from the rest of UK, now with Brexit.

This is very important as Shopify is useless to us now, if we can't be tax complaint. We have paid and invested in your service.

Please can you flag this up as urgent with your developing team !!

[George_Greenhil]

Thanks for making this feed, this needs issue resolving NOW.

[EZB]

Bumping this post - agree with OP. Seems like an easy fix. Please sort it out Shopify! 

[Lagruga]

@lolly2020 thanks for starting a new feed, let's keep feeding this thread until we get heard.

This is beyond ridiculous and without the need to going into details, its totally unacceptable. 

[alicepeg]

Agree, this really needs sorting out asap.  Northern Ireland Protocol also means I can't keep selling certain products in Northern Ireland, so we need to be able to prevent Northern Ireland sales without having to resort to accepting and cancelling orders.  I've raised a feature request via support chat too - apparently the more requests they get, the more it bumps it up the priority list. 

[Aria]

Hey!

In order for Shopify staff to flag things with our developers, you need to provide your store URL. Each store URL that is provided gives extra traction to the request. Without them, I don't have the opportunity to raise it at all. 

If anyone is uncomfortable providing their store URL on forums (certainly, it's not always best for your SEO), you are very welcome to raise the issue privately by contacting our support. It will have the same effect, staff on online chat and email have the same process for feature requests as we do on forums. 

Thank you!

[EZB]

Sent to Shopify support! 

[George_Greenhil]

@Aria  Unfortunately that's not good enough on this occasion. I've reported this issue regarding shipping prices multiple times over the past 5 years via support and forums as UK to NI is much more expensive for merchants. I have provided my store URL every time.

With Brexit, the platform now makes tax an absolute pain and we can't comply. All you have to do is separate Northern Ireland from Scotland, England and Wales. It's really not a tricky change, especially when smaller countries are spilt into 10+ mini-regions that aren't even countries. 

Shopify is a great platform, you release great new features but this is something that should've been added years ago...

[EZB]

@Aria can you hear us ? 

[Nick]

Hi everyone, 

I understand your frustration and how important this feature is and have passed feedback to the applicable teams. We have passed the feedback to the applicable teams about this.  We cannot speak to how features and issues are prioritized and cannot make forward-looking statements about the issues. 

This is an important issue and we do take it seriously, however spamming support or reaching out to staff members on 3rd party networks will not change the priority and only duplicate the work since it has already been captured. The community code of conduct can be seen here addressing this. 

[NeilD2301]

@Nick I've been going round in circles with this for far too long now - here's my take on it

Unfortunately Shopify aren’t going to do anything about this particular problem. (If they haven’t done so for more than 5 years – it’s highly unlikely it’s going to get resolved this week)

The con is all down to getting you onto either a higher tariff plan and/or subscribing to apps on the store.

There is however a solution. NOT COST FREE.

To clarify my particular situation: I need to have the ability to prevent anyone in Northern Ireland checking out and ordering our products. I would also like a brief message when they input a NI postcode at checkout to call us for a quote. Pretty simple right? Nope (as you’ve all more than likely found out).

This solution grates with me massively but it is a workaround - at a cost.

• Contact support, live chat is best.  Explain that your business can no longer legally supply to Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom due to the uncertainty surrounding incoming goods, border control and the potential of extra tariffs due to Brexit. Tell them that you need to be able to separate Northern Ireland as a shipping zone as a matter of urgency.
• They will then suggest this:
• “What we can suggest is to use an app like Better Shipping, Local Pickup, Advanced Shipping Rules and Parcelify”
• That’s all well and good, but they are around $19.99 a month to use. That, I suspect it’s part of the reason Shopify will do absolutely nothing about dividing up the UK into proper regions as they do for the rest of the world.
• Go ahead and try one of those apps (don’t bother just yet), you’ll find out that unless you are on Advanced Shopify and have 'Real-Time Carrier Shipping' enabled none of them will work.
• Put it to support that it seems like one has to upgrade one’s Shopify subscription in order to trade legally in the UK, ask them to clarify this point. They’ll dodge.
• In my case they came back to me with the suggestion that I could have ‘Real-Time Carrier Shipping’ enabled on my account – wait for it for an extra $20 dollars a month. Another part of the reason Shopify will do nothing about this particular problem.
• OK, so that’s better than upgrading to Advanced Shopify at $299 a month. But I’m still down $240 a year
• Real-Time Carrier Shipping is now activated – time to try some apps.
• After installing and uninstalling a few apps – this one seems to work the best, and yes you guessed it, there’s a cost of $20 per month to use it after your free trial.

Postcode Shipping – Ecommerce Plugins for Online Stores – Shopify App Store

• I’m still in the process of fine tuning the app with their support to get it where I want it to be, but this looks like being the only solution we are going to get at this moment in time. $480 a year to separate Northern Ireland from Mainland UK.

$480 - That is why Shopify are doing absolutely nothing to resolve this issue

I’m going to have to justify this cost to my board of directors and frankly it’s not going to go down well. The only option open to a lot of UK based Shopify merchants (ourselves included) will be to migrate to another platform.

[Re1]

Nick, I think you highlight the strength of feeling everyone has one this issue.  I've been shocked and disappointed (and I lot more I had better not say on here) that Shopify are not willing to separate out the four COUNTRIES of the United Kingdom.  We should not have to pay more or install more apps ( they are costly, they have to be set up and maintained and they go wrong) just for the privilege of choosing which countries we ship to.

I received an order for Northern Ireland this week, I then had to contact the customer, tell them I was cancelling it and refund them their money.  Absolutely ridiculous.

[PaulBarnes]

Hi Nick
It sounds like we are being listened to.
Please keep us updated every 1 or 2 weeks.

Regards
Paul

[Ida1]

I received a reply for the same issue from support today.  You won't be surprised at the "recommendation."

"I understand that since Brexit, there are some shipping issues for merchants that are located in the UK.

As of right now, you are correct, the Northern Ireland region is still part of the Unite Kingdom Shipping zone on Shopify. I have spoke with the shipping team in regard to this. We are currently gathering as much information as possible to create the best solution. As of right now, I don't have information on how things are changing in regard to the shipping aspect with regard to Brexit. I am aware that Governments are still making decisions, even though it's 'technically' already happened (there are delays expected).

• Advanced Shipping Rules

I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your business. I am making sure that this information is passed along and noted to the appropriate team to ensure we have a solution in the near future.

If you are in need of immediate assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Support Team! You can contact us here and we are available 24/7."

So basically install an app.  We do know what the situation is.  The situation is that since Brexit, a lot of merchant's do not want to/cannot ship to N.I.  We need the option to exclude them and stop transactions completing.  It's not an ongoing political issue anymore, we know what we need.  Just action it please!

[lolly2020]

@Ida1 

I got similar response, they are investigating how it's evolving. 

Well it's all ready evolved, decision is made. Northern Ireland is a dual taxation Zone!!

Let hope it's sorted soon.

We need all affected stores to email support, the more people contacting Shopify, the likely this will be prioritised!!

[Ida1]

Agreed, and increasingly frustrated that this thread is marked as 'solved.'  Assuming for KPI purposes.  It's clearly not solved.  Just anger inducing!! 🙂

[Ziggy1]

This an the Bot attacks from Boardman have been unresolved for years

[ficoboutique]

Hi @Nick as of now Shopify is not compliant with the current taxation agreement between the UE and the UK. This is not a trivial matter and companies are making decisions to use Shopify when you can't deliver something that is basic for everyone else.

If you decide to offer this feature for free or not is really up to you (it is bad enough what you did with the POS this year) but not informing your current customers and potential customers that you will not be able to comply with a legal and binding agreement that involves close to 30 countries. On your website there is no mention that you need additional 3rd party software to achieve this compliancy and you will need to review this.

We are seriously reviewing leaving Shopify. We love the platform, but your lack of support is leaving us in a situation that we can have serious repercussions and be fined.

[lolly2020]

Is there any update on this!!

[St3v3]

Another who has been requesting this is resolved for a long time now.

I did contact support before Christmas but got the reply as others have.

I am now having to cancel any orders we get for Northern Ireland, as it was costing us too much money due to the shipping cost difference between the rUK and NI.

Its clear Shopify will not do anything about this as it has already been going on so long, so we are being forced to look at alternatives to Shopify, shame really but they are leaving us little choice.

[Bulxar]

Is there any update on this!!

[Lagruga]

What I am hearing all the time is a bunch of excuses from all over the place; Support Chat, Phone, Forums, the lot. Then someone from Shopify makes a comment in this thread to highlight code of conduct? Definitely taking the mic!

Let's be real about this, the support team in here can do very little, probably zero influence (we thank them for trying)! There could be all sorts of politics inside Shopify that we are not aware of but neither the support team can say anything about it either. The subject has been going on for over 5 years and as of yet no solution. Its not a technical problem to them, for whatever reason Shopify chooses not to provide a solution and I can only think its a commercial driven decision. 

No matter how much we scream about it in here. it echos very weak. It has to come directly from each one of us straight to the helpline. That's what has been my strategy to push and push and I will not stop until we get there. Ridiculous, I know.

Other than that, I'll consider leaving Shopify.

Shame.

[Ida1]

Thanks for flagging this again. It’s ridiculous. Just had an order from NI overnight and had to cancel it. Could have so easily been missed and is totally unviable way of running a business.

I’ve sent an email to support with details of my store as requested, so hopefully this will be sorted out soon. Though for some reason I’m not holding out hope!

All I’ve done in the meantime is put notices on my store delivery page and product info that we don’t ship to NI anymore (will now have to add to banner as it clearly didn’t work!). I’ve also excluding NI in Google Ads and unfortunately filtered out/archived my NI contacts in Mailchimp. 

I’ve done what I can on my side to limit NI sales, now it’s up to Shopify to support us in this! Sharpish! 

[Ladybirdplants]

This is an issue for us too, what if Royal Mail starts charging more to ship there?  They we will be loosing money if they are not a seperate company

[St3v3]

Been making do with the limited UK shipping options since Shopify decided to finally action this, however have just come accross the issue where I can't split out the Channel Islands (Guernsey & Jersey) where we get charged an additional fee to ship to them.

Come on Shopify please get this sorted properly.