How can I avoid customers being charged twice for shipping at Checkout

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
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Topic summary

  • A Shopify merchant with two store locations reports customers are charged two shipping fees at checkout when an order includes items stocked at both locations. The merchant also wants a streamlined way to transfer items so the customer can pick up the full order from a single location.

  • A new Shopify feature, Smart Order Routing (automatically assigns orders to locations to optimize fulfillment), was suggested as a possible fix. However, another participant noted they couldn’t find a way to prevent double shipping with that feature.

  • The merchant asked for alternative approaches to charge shipping only once or to improve the pickup/transfer process. No specific configuration change or app-based workaround was confirmed in the thread.

  • A contributor asked whether the store uses live carrier-calculated rates or flat rates, implying potential solutions depend on the current rate setup. They requested this detail before proposing a solution.

  • Outcome: No confirmed resolution yet. The discussion is ongoing and awaits clarification on the rate setup to explore tailored workarounds.

Summarized with AI on January 4. AI used: gpt-5.
1

I have a client with a Shopify store that has 2 locations. The physical inventory could be in Location A or B, there is no central warehouse.

This is set up as a customer could order an item that is located in Store A, or place an order that has items from Store A and B ( the owner would need to transfer the physical item ordered from Store B to Store A so the customer can pick the full order from 1 location.

Because the Stock is not in a Warehouse Location, when an online order is placed and the items are from Store A and Store B the customer gets charged 2 sets of shipping when the are at checkout

How can I work around this? Is there a way to only charge the customer Shipping once? Or maybe setup the location pickup process in a more streamlined way?

I hope this make sense?

2

Hi there,

I think Shopify just launched a feature for that: https://community.shopify.com/post/2128121

3

Is there a way to then stop the shipping being charged twice if the order has 2 items from 2 locations?

4

I don’t think so. I wasn’t able to find a way to do that using smart order routing.

5

Any suggestions on how I can handle this in Shopify then?

6

Hello @ECOMHQ

Do you have live rates from carrier service or flat rates on Shopify settings?

there is one solution to depend on your setup. let me know