Local customers often use shipping instead of local delivery

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
1

Hi,

I am using local delivery and normal shipping options.
For some reason, a few customers keep selecting normal shipping and even pay for it, even though they are local, and have the local delivery option.
This is very frustrating for me, as
a) I have to refund shipping
b) I can never mark my order as delivered properly

Is there any way around that at all, that I might not have seen? I would love to disable the normal shipping option, so only local delivery is shown. Is this possible?

How do other people go about those orders? Is there any way to change the order back to local delivery somehow? If so, how?

I dont really even understand how people even select this option and even pay, instead of reaching out to me, but here we are.

1 Like
2

PS: I ONLY want to disable shipping for local deliveries, in case this was not clear from my text above (somehow I cant edit it anymore)

3

Hey @NomNoms

Shopify lets you set up Shipping Profiles with zones. If your local delivery zone is defined, you can remove standard shipping rates from that zone entirely, so those customers only see the local delivery option at checkout. Here’s how:

  1. Go to Settings → Shipping and delivery.
  2. Under your shipping profile, find the zone that overlaps with your local delivery area.
  3. Remove the standard shipping rates from that specific zone.
  4. Keep local delivery enabled for it.
  5. This way, customers in your delivery radius won’t even see the standard shipping option.

If there’s still any confusion then check out Shopify Shipping Profiles Guide or you can just share complete details with me and I’ll set it up for you.

Hope that helps! If it did, a Like and Marking it as Solution goes a long way and helps others find the fix faster too.

Best,
Moeed

4

Thank you for your reply.
In my normal shipping profile (General) I only have the shipping zone “United Kingdom”. This does overlap with my local delivery area, obviously (I am UK only). There is no option to adjust anything there, I can only select a country or a region, but no area. I also cannot add local delivery there.

In the local delivery option, I have 2 zones, no other options really.

So not sure what you are referring to. I am not on Shopify Plus, if this is what is needed to change that?

5

In my experience most local customers just pick whatever shows up first at checkout, so I reordered my shipping profiles to make local delivery appear at the top. I also set local delivery to free and kept a small charge on standard shipping — that nudge alone shifted a ton of orders over.

Under Settings > Shipping and delivery > Local delivery, make sure your radius or zip codes are dialed in tight so it surfaces automatically for the right customers. That combo of visibility + a price incentive did most of the heavy lifting for me.

1 Like
6

If you want to avoid this, the cleanest way is to restrict your shipping zone so local postal codes/regions are only covered under Local Delivery and not under your normal shipping rates. That way, customers in that area won’t even see the shipping option.

Alternatively, you can:

  • Rename shipping to something like “Non-local delivery (outside city)” to make it clearer

  • Add a note at checkout or cart like “If you’re local, please select local delivery”

Unfortunately, you can’t change an order from shipping → local delivery after it’s placed, you’d still need to refund and handle it manually.