How do I get my Local Delivery option to override the General Shipping rules?

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

A merchant operating two BC-based websites with separate warehouses needs to prevent customers from one region ordering on the wrong site. They set up Local Delivery with a 110km radius restriction, but customers can still complete orders by selecting the General Shipping option, which only allows province-level (BC-wide) geographic restrictions in Shopify.

Current Challenge:

  • Local Delivery radius works correctly
  • General Shipping cannot be narrowed beyond provincial level
  • Cross-location orders create operational issues and potential missed communications between warehouses

Proposed Solution:
A support representative from Zapiet recommends using their “Rates by Distance” app (requires carrier-calculated shipping on the Shopify plan). This would enforce radius-based restrictions on all delivery methods. Two implementation options were suggested: either keep existing Local Delivery and add the app for shipping control, or simplify by removing Local Delivery entirely and managing everything through the app.

Key Limitation:
Shopify doesn’t allow disabling the default shipping option entirely—removing rates/zones may cause checkout errors rather than defaulting to Local Delivery only.

Status: The merchant is exploring whether they can operate with Local Delivery only; the discussion remains open.

Summarized with AI on November 3. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello,
We are one of two websites in BC. We get a lot of cross orders, mainly our customers ordering on the other website.

I have set up Local Delivery with a 110km radius to stop people in the other location ordering on my website, however if I put a location that is several hundred km outside the radius it seems to still allow me to place an order.
In General Shipping I can’t narrow the zone down to anything less than the province of BC. How can I get Shopify to apply the radius rule please?

2

Hi,

Pavlo here from Zapiet Merchant Support. I will try to assist you with this case!

If I understand correctly, your customers get offered both shipping and local delivery options at the checkout: local delivery is enabled specifically, while shipping is available as the default. The issue arises when customers choose shipping, as Shopify doesn’t currently allow narrowing down shipping zones beyond a province-wide level, making it difficult to enforce your desired radius restriction. Please correct me if I am wrong somewhere!

As a solution, we recommend using our dedicated rate app, Rates by Distance. (Please note, this app requires carrier-calculated shipping to be enabled in your Shopify plan.) With this app, you can configure delivery/shipping zones based on a radius from your store. You can assign shipping costs to each zone, and when a customer enters their address at checkout, our app determines if the address is within the radius. If it is, a rate will be provided; if it’s outside the radius, checkout will display an error, preventing the order.

Using this app, you can choose one of two approaches:

  1. Keep your current local delivery setup:

    • In addition to your existing local delivery configuration, you can integrate Rates by Distance as a carrier. Go to Shopify Shipping and Delivery Settings > General (or another shipping) profile > Add Rate and select Use Third Party App or Carrier from the dropdown. Choose Rates by Distance as your carrier. This will allow your customers to choose between local delivery (distance controlled by your Shopify settings) and shipping (distance controlled by Rates by Distance).

  2. Simplify with just one option:

    • If your local delivery setup is only used for distance restrictions, you can remove it and let the app handle everything. Disable local delivery in your Shopify settings and add Rates by Distance to your shipping zone as mentioned above. The app will manage restrictions, offering customers one default, streamlined checkout process.

We hope this solution helps resolve the issue! If you have any further questions or need assistance with setup, feel free to reply to this message.

Kind regards,

Pavlo

3

Hello Pavlo,
Thank you for taking the time to reply. We have a standard delivery fee (or free if a certain number of items are purchased.)

Each website/location has their own warehouse so I need to be able to stop people in the other warehouse region from ordering on my website. Currently the two sites pass the order details from one site to the other but this leaves the door open for one site to forget to tell the other about orders on the wrong website, order details getting missed.

We have our own delivery team in each location so no outside carriers apply.

Can I disable Shipping and have Local Delivery only is what I’m asking I guess.

I’m pretty new to this (as you can probably tell lol!) so I’m floundering a bit.

4

Hi again,

I am afraid Shopify doesn’t offer any possibility to disable the default shipping option. Simply removing rates and zones from your general shipping profile might drive Shopify to throwing errors rather than defaulting to local delivery. Thus, you might want to consider using a dedicated local delivery/rate app that will control the distance for all orders and options.

All the best!

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