Your chosen shipping rate is no longer valid error message

[leebinders]

Hello - we are having problems with customers getting the error "Your chosen shipping rate is no longer valid." This occurs right after they enter their credit card information. The customer is then stuck in the shopping cart, unable to complete their order. We are using the Multi Carrier Shipping Label app. The error began occurring just after we implemented the app. We are happy with the app otherwise. This is happening with about 5% of our customers - intermittent. We would appreciate suggestions for a solution. Thanks!

[Helen]

Hello, @leebinders. Sorry to hear you are experiencing this. I can see how it would be impacting your business.

I looked into that error message your customers are receiving, and it could have to do with the  ‘Company name’ field being enabled in your checkout address form. If it is enabled, and a customer enters anything in the ‘Company name’ field, then they'll have access to shipping options that are only available to business addresses. Therefore, If you aren't selling to businesses, then there won’t be any business specific shipping rates available to your customers, and thus they are unable to complete their order.  

Therefore, as a first step towards troubleshooting this, please go to ‘Settings > Checkout’ and see if your ‘Company name’ field is enabled. If so, please hide the field. The steps for this are also found in the Help Doc Editing the checkout forms options. 

Please let me know if this helps at all.

[CarolR]

I removed company name  (dont include) and it did not help

[AmerK]

Helen, I’m facing the same issue on our website. This issue is only occurring if the customer tries to pay through credit card. If they choose Cash on Delivery payment method instead, there is no issue and the order goes through. Removing the Company name option from the checkout page did not affect / solve the issue. What else can be done to fix this issue as it’s affecting customer retention. 

[cmilam2018]

We have this problem, but company name is not enabled in our shop. There must be another solution. 

[CarolR]

Helen,

We are losing sales due to this issue.  Do you have an ETA on a fix?

Thank you

[adamlitt]

Unfortunately, we are losing sales as well.  We’re receiving a number of inquiries from frustrated customers that can’t checkout.  Shopify hasn’t been able to resolve this and has recommended we hire a developer. 

[adamlitt]

Hello, we’re experiencing a similar issue and using Multivendor Marketplace.  The has been occurring for about two weeks now and we can seem to resolve it.  Did you end up finding a solution?

[cmilam2018]

This is happening for us too. Company name is not enabled on our shop, so that is not a fix. 

Please advise!

[A25patel]

We are seeing the same issue. We've checked in with our third party app that handles our shipping totals but nothing has been changed in our end or theirs. About 30% of our consumers are seeing this message at checkout. If they go into incognito mode, they are able to check out just fine, but we're not sure why. We've had our third party app installed for over a year now so it was not a new change. 

[adamlitt]

We verified that this is working in incognito mode for us as well.  Thanks for the tip.  We’ve passed it along and we’ll see if we can make our way towards resolution.

[pirkeytwins]

Hi, we are experiencing the same issue when costumers try to check out, what worked for you? 

[Ange2]

Same issues here, using Multivendor Marketplace app.

From what I can gather, Shopify has problems pulling shipping rates from a third party. They seem to have implemented 'backup rates' as an alternative solution. (https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shipping/setting-up-and-managing-your-shipping/backup-shipping-ra...)

For us this isn't a solution as we use the Multivendor app to allow hundreds of fulfilment locations, and the 'backup rates' feature only uses locations in Shopify to calculate rates (of which we only have 1). Maybe it helps someone else here though?  

[adamlitt]

Thanks for your insights.  Backup rates were not a solution for us either since we run a marketplace and each of our vendors utilize different shipping rates.  As you suggested, there is some sort of communication problem between the app and Shopify.  While we've escalated this as an urgent issue, it has been months and we still do not have a resolution.

We ended up setting up around 100 individual rates, one for each vendor, as sort of a band-aid and this solution seems to work at the moment, but again, this is a band-aid, not a long-term fix.    

[Ange2]

Hey @adamlitt wow what a mess.

Do you mean that you stopped using the Marketplace Shipping feature in Multivendor app and now set all your shipping rates + fulfilment locations within Shopify? We couldn't use this strategy as Shopify's locations limit doesn't allow for our hundreds of vendor fulfilment locations. 

Or if the case is that you're using both, i.e. shipping rates through the app, and then also in Shopify, how are you managing this? From what I understood, the products in the app can only be in Shopify's default location.

Also do you have an estimate of how often this error was occurring for your customers? Of course only the ones that notify you about it too...

[adamlitt]

Hey @Ange2

Agreed!  It's been an incredible mess and has cost us quite a bit in terms of man hours dedicated to resolving the issue and following up with upset customers.  Not to mention the reputational damage we've suffered from our customers losing patience with us. 

Regarding frequency, the issue would occur whenever a change was made to the cart contents or when a coupon code was used then deleted - essentially whenever shipping had pulled in from the third party app a second time.  Some days, it was quiet and there were no issues, while others it seemed there was issue after issue, angry email after angry email, but it's difficult to gauge the overall impact. 

Finally, to manage the issue, we disconnected the third party app and setup individual shipping rates for each vendor (around 100 vendors).  I think you're correct that Shopify only allows one location, but that's not really an issue for us since we hand off the shipping to another vendor anyway.   In your case, have you considered trying another third party app to see if it can handle the shipping problem?