Cubic Shipping Not Offered; UPS Rates Offered to Customers Not Same as Offered to Shopify Admin

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
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Topic summary

Two shipping issues reported: lack of native cubic-rate logic at checkout and a persistent UPS Next Day rate mismatch between checkout and admin.

  • Cubic shipping: Etsy uses product dimensions and available boxes to select a fit and charge current commercial cubic rates. Shopify lacks this natively; the merchant relies on a third‑party app that doesn’t pull the same rates Shopify can access, and requests built‑in support.

  • UPS Next Day discrepancy: For 2+ years, customers are shown/paying lower Shopify UPS Next Day rates at checkout than the merchant sees when purchasing labels in admin. Other UPS services (e.g., 2nd Day) match. A global service fee would inflate non‑Next Day options, so Next Day was removed. Support response reportedly: “that’s the way it is.” The merchant asks if others see this.

  • Update note: Winter 2026 “Default package per variant” is noted but viewed as not solving cubic‑based checkout accuracy or rate parity.

Status: Unresolved and ongoing; seeking peer confirmation. Key questions: native cubic-rate implementation and fixing UPS Next Day rate parity.

Summarized with AI on December 11. AI used: gpt-5.
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A couple of things…

Etsy now uses seller’s inputed product dimensions and available boxes to sort out what sized box the product(s) purchased can fit into, and charge current commercial cubic rates to the customer based on that box size. I have to pay another app to do this, and unfortunately, its not pulling in the same rates Shopify is able to get and offer to the seller. Shopify should also be able to do this natively, and not via apps.

UPS Next Day Rates issue. This has been going on for 2 years or more and CS says “Yeah, that’s the way that it is.” :roll_eyes: When customer is checking out, they are offered Shopify UPS Rates. The UPS Next Day rates they are offered (and pay for) are LOWER than the rates I am presented with by Shopify when shipping that order. UPS 2nd Day and all other rates are the same between buyer and seller/admin. Sure, I could add service fee, which I already have, but that needlessly pushes up the other non-Next Day rates. So, I can no longer offer it. Anyone else see this?

And Winter 2026 Update we get, “Default package per variant: Set a default package for each variant to get more accurate shipping rates at checkout and buy labels faster for single‑item orders.” LoL - whoopie