Solving surprise UPS delivery fees in Canada?
If your customers in Canada are reporting surprise delivery fees, you are probably shipping “DDU” or “Delivered Duty Unpaid.” You won’t be surprised to learn that this experience makes your international customers less likely to make repeat purchases.
The solution is to ship “DDP” or “Delivered Duty Paid.” By enabling Shopify’s duties calculator, or by using Managed Markets, Shopify will calculate in your checkout what the customs officials will need for import duties, and collect those funds from your customer up front. Then you can buy duty prepaid shipping labels in the Shopify admin, and the carrier will take the duty amount from you and deliver to your customer with no additional charges. This reduction in surprise is important, but it also saves your customer money because UPS and other carriers charge expensive processing fees on top of what customs charges them to import the product. So customers may only owe $5 in taxes if they pay in checkout, but that would be $20 at the door.
If you use Managed Markets, Shopify guarantees the collected duties amount, and can even automatically configure your international prices to be duty inclusive. This optimizes for conversion by avoiding even the in-checkout increase of price due to duty amounts. The same price the customer is anchored to on the storefront stays consistent through checkout, and Shopify guarantees your normal payout and that the duties and import taxes are covered for your buyer.
Thank you. Managed Markets can get quite expensive for small businesses.