Been operating with the Basic plan for over a year, and UPS obviously wasn’t available at checkout (Canadian here).
In the back end, the UPS shipping labels have been notably cheaper the past few weeks, when compared to Purolator/Canada Post. On a “ships free” order I’m happy to select UPS, and my ToS support that (my choice), but when a customer pays for a small order’s shipping, and they’ve chosen a specific courier/rate offering, I generally stick to that (even if my cost ends up being higher due to package sizing etc).
I went back and forth through the plan pricing, and the chatbot over and over. Upgraded to GROW so i could finally enable the carrier calculated shipping at checkout, expecting to see these cheaper rates now available but apparently Canadian operators need to have their own UPS account. Fine. Signed up and got the “ships to mostly residential” discount table, showing 52% off. But the rates shown at checkout are nearly 4X that of Purolator/CP?!?!
For example.
1lb box, 6x6x4" from Surrey BC to Toronto ON is $14-15 via Purolator or CP
1lb box, 6x6x4" from Surrey BC to Toronto ON is $46-50 via UPS
The UPS option was ~$14 when i go to buy the label through Shopify.
Last week there was multiple times when the label for UPS was $12.80 vs Puro/CP $18 for orders I was shipping, but customers only see the $18+ pricing at checkout. Getting that $12.80 to show up there would massively improve conversion and dropoff numbers.
Anyone else navigated this? I tried to reach out to UPS but they are overwhelmed today and can’t even get a callback scheduled. Will try again Monday. Hoping someone else has a tip to get me sorted.
Live customer checkout: (Please note i have 20% discount enabled on CP and Puro for customer facing rates)
Having your own UPS account and connecting it to Shopify is based on your contracted rates with UPS. So whatever your rate is with UPS it will show on the customer front end. I am not sure why Shopify doesnt allow us to show their live rates with UPS, maybe they have a deal with Canada Post and Purlotor with the front end live rates.
Shopify has commerical accounts with Purolator, Canada Post, UPS, etc that is why your seeing cheaper rates when purchasing your labels threw Shopify. This is usually based on volume, so if you are not doing high volume, your most likely are not gonna get the same rates as Shopify.
I do understand how the volume works, and I realize the rates I get are “negotiated” but when I signed up for a business account, and was given “52% off” or whatever it was, that it would be a lot closer. I have a hard time believing that I would be charged $84+ if I just walked up to a counter to ship a 1lb box, which is what that “discount” level would indicate the listed rate to be…
There can’t be a single company that would just say "Ok cool… " with rates that high. Something seems off.
If I use the generic rate estimator on their website (not using my account) the rates are the same. So there’s no discount applied.
Feel pretty confident I need to get in touch with UPS to sort it out. Was just hoping for similar stories from anyone else that’s been through it in case there was something i was missing, or maybe had a more direct way to contact them.
First, it really looks like your UPS negotiated rates aren’t showing at checkout properly. You should push support to confirm if your UPS account rates are actually being used, or if it’s just default retail rates showing. But even after that, I still think UPS via Shopify Shipping will likely be cheaper because they get access to deeper discounts, and your personal UPS account doesn’t have enough volume to match those rates.
Second, I entered the box dimensions you mentioned on the UPS site, and it’s calculating a dimensional weight of 2 lb even though the actual weight is 1 lb. So, going forward, you should factor that in when comparing rates. Also, the UPS services you’re comparing against Canada Post/Purolator are likely express services, so some price difference is expected. But still, not 3 4x higher
Third, one workaround I can think of for your case is to show live rates from your own UPS account, but mark them down by a fixed percentage so they better match what Shopify Shipping would cost. This percentage would be a fixed number here, based on the difference in discounts you are seeing between these accounts. So now you’d still show those adjusted live rates at checkout, and then generate the actual label through Shopify Shipping on the backend.
One challenge here is that Shopify doesn’t really let you directly mark down carrier-calculated rates, but there are several apps that can help; you can try and explore those.
