Shipping rate name not showing, and general shipping queries

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
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Topic summary

Issue: When checkout contains products from different shipping profiles, the rate name is replaced by the generic label “Shipping” with a combined price, instead of showing specific rate names like “Royal Mail 2nd Class – £3.00.” Images demonstrate the generic label versus expected named rates.

Documented behavior: Rates from multiple profiles are combined; if rates have different names, Shopify shows the cheapest combined options under “Shipping,” per the linked help article.

User observation: Previously, combined rates sometimes displayed the closest named option (e.g., “Royal Mail – Tracked 48”), but recently it switched to always showing “Shipping” without a clear reason. The user wants to avoid a single profile because packaging sizes and weight overlaps could cause over/undercharging.

Advice given: With flat-rate shipping, expect only approximate totals. Consider one shipping profile and adjust each product’s weight to the higher of volumetric or actual weight, then use weight-based ranges to better align costs.

Status: No definitive fix for rate naming; suggestion provided. The discussion remains open, with the change in naming behavior unresolved.

Summarized with AI on December 30. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hi,

Wondering if anyone can help with this. I’ve set up shipping profiles and weight based rates, and connected products for each profile, but when items from different profiles are in the checkout, the shipping rate name is replaced with “shipping” and the shipping cost, as opposed to “Royal Mail 2nd Class – £3.00”, or something like that.

The individual rate names show when the products are on their own in the checkout, or another product from the same shipping profile is added, but when another product from a different shipping profile is added, the shipping just changes to “shipping – £3.00”, or whatever the cost is. See photos attached.

"Shipping" shown for both products
"Shipping" shown for both products2240×884 117 KB

Actual shipping rate of one product (art print)
Actual shipping rate of one product (art print)2234×882 82 KB

Actual shipping rate of other product (book)
Actual shipping rate of other product (book)2246×882 76.2 KB

Book shipping rates
Book shipping rates1402×808 52.1 KB

Art print shipping rates
Art print shipping rates1402×1138 81.3 KB

Any help or suggestions with this? I don’t want to put everything on one shipping profile, as the weights of different sized products sometimes cross over. For example, buying 2 x A4 art prints will cost the same amount as one A4 art print, but the weight of an A3 art print is great than one A4 but less than two A4s. This means the shipping rate of the A3 will be the same as an A4, which then means it will cost more to ship than the rate the customer pays. A4 = £2.00, A3 = £3.00, but the A3 will show the £2.00 shipping rate. Hope that makes sense.

I’ve been having issues with setting up shipping rates in general, as I sell small lightweight products up to bigger heavier products, so I’ve tried to set up numerous shipping rates in different profiles, so

  1. customers aren’t over charged/under charged for shipping,

and

  1. I’m not losing out on money because a product costs more to ship than what the rate is listed as.

I don’t get enough sales to justify paying out unnecessary amounts for third party shipping apps.

Hope someone can help.

2

When products from multiple shipping profiles are at checkout, the shipping rates will be combined. If all of your rates have different names, then the cheapest options are added together and shown to your customer at checkout under the name ‘Shipping’

3

Hi Mirdas,
Thanks for replying.
I’ve been playing around with different profiles and rates (with different names) all week, but when I test the checkout with various items from these profiles, it’s always combined the prices and given the actual name of the closest rate which covers the overall cost (for example; Royal Mail – Tracked 48). It switched to saying just ‘Shipping’ yesterday, for some reason.

Probably easier to put everything in one shipping profile, but that’ll throw off the shipping rates being charged to the customer vs the actual shipping cost I’ll be paying the courier, as packaging sizes and weights will be different for the products.

Best wishes.

4

With flat rate shipping, you can expect only approximate rates at checkout.

One suggestion is to adjust the weight of products according to the higher of volumetric weight or actual weight. This way, you may be able to manage all products within a single shipping profile and configure the shipping rates based on weight ranges.