If you use Shopify Shipping (which shows—even recommends—shipping methods that you can’t actually purchase/use), if you check the box next to “Email shipping confirmation to customers now” and click on “buy shipping label,” then Shopify sends your customer a shipping confirmation email regardless of whether the label is purchased or not.
In other words, shopify shows shipping methods it knows you can’t use and lets you select them, and lets you check the box next to “email shipping confirmation to customers now,” and lets you click on “buy shipping label”, and sends the shipping confirmation email to the customer, AND THEN provides a (usually very vague) error message and doesn’t complete the shipping label purchase. So the customers gets shipping info even though no label’s been purchased and nothing’s been shipped.
The “solution” (not really…just more work to make up for this shopify issue) is to never send shipping confirmation emails to customers like shopify suggests by simply checking that box…instead, leave that box unchecked always, and then after the label is actually purchased, copy the tracking # and create a new email to the customer and paste the tracking # into that, and then hit send.
The safest workaround is to leave email shipping confirmation unchecked until the label is actually purchased. If the label purchase fails after that checkbox is selected, the customer can get a shipping email while you still have no usable label, so I’d treat the email as the final step, not part of the label purchase step.
Hey @ooe518 ,
The issue with Shopify Shipping is that the system can display shipping methods that may not actually be available for purchase and it allows you to send a shipping confirmation email before the label is successfully created. If the label purchase then fails, the customer still receives a shipping confirmation even though no shipment has been processed which leads to confusion.
The correct solution is to avoid sending the shipping confirmation at the label purchase step. You should first ensure that the shipping label has been successfully purchased, and only then send the tracking details to the customer. This can be done by manually copying the tracking number after successful label creation and sending a separate email or letting Shopify send the notification after confirmation. This ensures customers only receive accurate and verified shipping information.
Thank You !
Hey @Wsp
Yeah, I see this a lot once you scale - manually managing fulfillment + notifications separately is where things slip up. Once you’re past 100+ orders/day, manually sync order status and manage customer communication is a burden to your team. Angry customers, dispute all increased once you forgot to send notifications and updates.
We switched to an order tracking app that syncs everything and handles notifications automatically, so confirmations never get missed and your team saves hours. You can check it here
This is commonly the result of the fulfill action being triggered before the label purchase has been completed successfully, even if errors occur in the checkout flow after the email step. Workaround is to separate label purchase and fulfillment: consider your order as fulfilled once the label transaction shows on the order timeline with tracking attached. Uncheck the email notification while you are trying to purchase to stop early triggers. If you want carrier flexiblity, you get that better with a dedicated shipping app where label purchase and fulfillment are two separate steps rather than conflated as this one does.