I’m a B2B merchant selling products from multiple vendors and shipping locations that include hazmat-regulated products requiring mandatory surcharges (hazmat fees, temperature controlled shipping and more) at checkout.
Over the past several months, orders placed via agentic/AI shopping agents (including ChatGPT and Google) have been bypassing my checkout entirely, resulting in those required fees not being applied. This is causing direct financial losses on every affected order.
i had the same issue with ShopPay and had to disable all but the most basic check out options.
I have not fully disabled agentic as I do want new leads and store traffic.
I worked at length to navigate this and I even managed to chat with live support. Repeatedly, I am told the only solution is to upgrade to the PLUS Plan which is not an option for me just yet as a new business although, I do aspire to get there. This tells me Shopify is aware of the problem and is knowingly choosing to gate keep a solution to a problem they created and is hurting merchants behind expensive monthly fees. This does not sit well as I chose Shopify because they advertise themselves as a B2B platform.
I have had to absorb multiple fee losses. The situation is unsustainable.
What I’ve tried:
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Disabled all quick checkout in my Shopify settings
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Implemented Magical Fees (a cart-level fee app) — bypassed by agentic checkout
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Implemented VOL Extra Fees & Surcharges (a checkout-level fee app) — VOL’s own developers confirmed after weeks of work that this is a Shopify platform issue they cannot fix
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Escalated to Shopify Support — no solution offered beyond upgrading to Shopify Plus
The core issue: Agentic and API-based checkouts bypass the layer where third-party fee apps operate. It seems no app can fix this — it requires a platform-level solution.
What I’m asking for:
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Agentic checkouts should respect the same fee logic as standard checkouts
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Merchants should have meaningful controls to block or gate agentic checkout paths without requiring a Plus upgrade
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Shopify should acknowledge this as a platform responsibility
Has anyone else experienced this? Would appreciate knowing if others are hitting the same wall or id there is a viable solution?
Hey there @Greenuser,
You don’t really need Shopify Plus to fix this.
The issue is that AI agents (like ChatGPT/Google) bypass your storefront’s frontend JavaScript entirely and interact directly with Shopify’s backend APIs. This completely skips third-party fee apps.
Here are two ways to fix this on a standard Shopify plan right now:
Solution 1: Keep AI Traffic, Block AI Checkout (Recommended)
You can let AI agents find your products for SEO/leads, but force them to send buyers to your website to check out:
- Go to Sales channels > Agentic (or the respective AI channel) in your admin.
- Turn OFF “Direct Checkout” or “Allow Shopify to manage for me.”
- Keep Shopify Catalog access turned ON.
Result: The AI will still recommend your products, but the customer must click through to your site, triggering your fee apps.
Solution 2: Bake Fees into Native Shipping Profiles
API/Agentic checkouts cannot bypass Shopify’s native shipping engine.
- Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery.
- Create a custom shipping profile for your Hazmat / Temp-Controlled items.
- Add the required surcharges directly into the shipping rate price (e.g., name the rate “Standard Shipping + Mandatory Hazmat Fee”).
Result: The backend forces the AI agent to charge this rate before the order can close.
Hope this helps,
This is a real platform-level gap, and your instinct is right about where it breaks:
accelerated and agentic checkouts jump straight to a prebuilt cart, so any surcharge an app
injects at the cart stage never gets applied because that step doesn’t run. What tends to
survive is fee logic that lives at the checkout/order stage instead — Shopify Functions
(cart-and-checkout style) and checkout UI extensions run server-side at checkout, so they’re
much harder for an agentic flow to skip than a cart-page app. If your hazmat surcharges
currently come from an app that adds a cart line item, that’s almost certainly why they
vanish on the ChatGPT/Google orders. Since this is compliance-driven rather than a
nice-to-have, I’d open a case with Shopify and ask specifically whether agentic/Universal
checkout honors checkout-stage Functions — and until they confirm it does, you may need to
exclude the hazmat SKUs from agentic checkout so you’re not shipping them without the
required fees. Do you know whether your current fee app works at the cart stage or via a
checkout function?
Thank you for you response.
I appreciate the suggestions. These are reasonable solutions I have considered, but not ideal.
I have already disabled all expedited payment options, allowing only basic credit card functionality, and have considered turning off Ai options as well. It’s a shame to have to turn away a new lead source business because the software doesn’t work right as lower subscription levels. As a newer small business, I do appreciate the new customers and have written off losses as the cost of customer acquisition but there is potential big losses if I keep with that strategy.
I cannot bake all fees into product pricing as some fees apply only once per vendor per order, while others apply per order or once per SKU. i work with over a dozen vendors, and each have varying fees and tariffs.
I just want a chance to success and not flat the check out gate.
I appreciate you input. I am currently using Magical Fees which has been easy in terms of over all logic and set up, but yes, it fails due to fees added at cart level. I did test runs with another provider VOL (suggested by Shopify’s Ai help) who confirmed this is a Shopify platform issue. I also chatted with 2 humans with no solution other than both confirm this Plus subscription does not have this issue. It’s unfortunate that Shopify has a solution to a problem they created but does not value the success of new business just getting off the ground to make it affordable.
Hi! @Greenuser
As a workaround, the only foolproof solution to prevent bypass is to decouple fee from checkout calculations and move it upstream. Many B2B sellers that deal with regulated surcharges package hazmat and temperature fees within product and shipping profile pricing, so they never leave the SKU, no matter what path the buyer takes to checkout. Alternatively, you can move high risk orders to a B2B draft order process with company accounts where each order is created from an admin approved invoice with fees locked in. This completely bypasses the Storefront API checkout routes.
Can you share your website link?