My products HAVE to be kept cold. I freeze them and ship them with ice packs in thermal boxes. I used USPS and paid $17 for 2 day shipping. It took 6 days and the product arrived hot. I’m extremely upset. How can I get a refund from SHOPIFY on that shipping label so I can pay AGAIN to have it shipped through another carrier.
Hi @Leilaniluxx
That’s interesting. I know some Shopify stuff but not too much shipping stuff. Will you please explain a bit more about how it works - so I can suggest something?
So, you as a vendor sell some products and you used USPS to ship your product to the customer and they delivered it late as well as hot. So how did you connect with the USPS service? Was it through Shopify or manually outside?
Please clarify. Thanks!
Unfortunately, this is not Shopify’s fault, and there’s nothing that Shopify can do about it. Your complaint would be with USPS.
Given the difficulty of making any claim with USPS, I’d expect that you could spend tens of hours trying to get a refund from them and receive nothing.
Personally, I’d rather spend that time focused on some activity that grows my sales or profitability, what do you think?
To avoid the issue in the future, I suggest trying a private carrier for these types of shipments, so that you have some guarantees and some recourse if things go wrong. I understand that may increase your shipping costs. You might have to adjust your pricing model or some other cost structure to make up for it. Easier said than done, I know, but I’ve helped several brands experiment with that.
I typically trust USPS for normal shipments, they’ve become much more dependable over the last 10 years. However, when things go wrong, they are the worst to deal with.
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Hi @Leilaniluxx
I am really sorry to hear that your package wasn’t delivered within the timeframe you expected. Never a great situation for both yourself and your customer to be in.
Have you been able to submit a claim to USPS yet about this order? If not, you will want to do so by following the appropriate link below:
Domestic claims: https://www.usps.com/help/claims.htm
International claims: https://www.usps.com/help/international-claims.htm.
Steps on how to do this: Request a USPS Refund Online (Domestic) - YouTube
Please note that USPS claims for shipping labels that are purchased through your Shopify admin can only be done through the web browser. Calling in or visiting in person to open a claim will not work.
It’s also important to double check which shipping option you used as only Priority Mail Express has a 1-2 day delivery guarantee. Other shipping methods may have estimated shipping times of 1-3 days, but that is not guaranteed and not something that USPS will refund for.
You can review all the USPS mail options on their website here: USPS Mail and Shipping Services.
We had to solve this for similar clients who ship perishable items.
We actually built a system (app) that looks at a weather API, then calls for the transit times to the destination AND then adds mandatory ice packs to the order.
You can imagine the challenges ordering chocolates to a location like Las Vegas, NV would present.
You can see it in action here: https://www.herculescandy.com/
These types of apps work for pretty much any scenario where you want or need to add products as a surcharge to an order and make it so customers cannot remove them during checkout.
Thanks,
Tom Granger, CEO
FDG Web, Inc
Office: 360-572-0398 : Ext. 108
Cell: 425-466-0804
www.fdgweb.com
tom@fdgweb.com
About Us: We’re a full-service digital agency with all in-house employees. We can be your developer or designer “on-demand”.