I would like to ask if other stores have had success with Markets Pro. Please respond with your experiences. The hope is that Shopify will try to remedy some of these issues if others are having the same problems we are. I hope Shopify does not delete my post. These are real concerns that I am trying to work through to make Markets Pro work for our company.
For frame of reference, we ship between 53,000 and 58,000 shipments per year. Currently only about 8% are international shipments but this number growing.
FIRST THE PROS
We like that Market Pro handles duty and taxes, currency conversions, and custom forms.
We like that we get a slightly better DHL shipping rate than we receive from Shipstation.
THE PROBLEMS
Since we turned on Markets Pro we have had numerous issues, most of which involved changes to what is available for sale to int’l customers, and changes to our shipping procedures. We have been able to solve and adapt to many small issues that happened when we first enabled Markets Pro.
However, our company has had continual issues in two areas with Markets Pro. One, getting Market Pro labels issued, and two, getting help from Shopify support when there is a delivery issue, or any other issue.
Problem One: GETTING MARKET PRO LABELS ISSUED
The first problem is that many labels will not print in the Shipstation system. On these orders, we have had to train our employees to go back to Shopify and print the label from there. This has caused confusion on almost a daily basis so far. This definitely interrupts the workflow.
Sometimes, we simply cannot get the label available even in Shopify no matter what we do. Since there is no error reason given by Shipstation or Shopify as to why a label won’t spit out, we try different things such as tweaking the shipping address or manipulating things that would change the customs docs.
After several days of trying to reach support for an answer about these label issues, we were told to change the “Merchant of Record” on the order page from “Markets Pro” to our company. However, this cannot be changed on most of the orders.
So the final workaround we devised is to create a manual shipment in Shipstation for the customer’s order, and to ship it with DHL outside of the Markets Pro system. This creates more work for the shipping team, and it totally negates the purpose of using Markets Pro.
The alternative to this is to cancel a customer’s order and refund them. This is a pretty poor solution because it damages our reputation and disappoints the customer, and of course, it is a loss of revenue.
THE REAL PROBLEM WITH NOT BEING ABLE TO PRINT SOME LABELS
The result of this is that our company doesn’t get the payout for orders where we had to do a workaround. By the way, auditing these payments is not an easy task. There is no easy way to audit it so it takes a lot of time and patience to try and reconcile the orders through Markets Pro with the payouts.
If we end up creating manual shipping for an order, I don’t think Markets Pro ever gets a notification that DHL picked up the shipment, and therefore, we don’t get paid for the order.
I have been unable to audit this exactly, but we think that we have not been paid for several hundreds of dollars worth of orders in the last 30 days. Not a lot, but it is definitely a negative with our experience using Markets Pro thus far.
PROBLEM TWO: ISSUES WITH DELIVERY PROBLEMS AND SUPPORT
Issue number two happens every time there is a delivery issue with a Markets Pro shipment. Apparently, when a package is lost, or there is some type of trouble with delivery, we are to reach out to Shopify Support. This has been a complete failure. We have so far seen 3 types of issues.
First - Issue with DHL E-commerce that goes to USPS distribution center in Illinois.
This problem results in a loss of revenue. If a customer selects the standard international which I think is called DHL Economy, a USPS label is provided. The shipment goes to a USPS distribution center in Illinois, where it is to be picked up by DHL. Shopify Markets Pro does not release your sales revenue for orders until the shipment is received by DHL, and scanned. We have had packages stuck at this USPS distribution center for 30 days. If DHL never picks up the package, you don’t get paid and the customer does not get their order.
The result is that we refund the customer, and we have lost the shipment and items.
Second - Issue with any order lost in the mail, undelivered, courier issues, shipping address issues, etc.
When an order is not delivered as expected, and we hear from the customer, we try our best to figure out what has happened. Tracking on some of these orders is confusing at best. Often, through Markets Pro, some packages are not ultimately delivered by DHL at all, but are handed off to a third party courier which complicates the delivery even more. According to Shopify, the resolution is to contact Shopify Support, as they are the Merchant of Record.
We handle this with the customer by immediately issuing a refund for the shipping costs. If the package is not found within a few days we issue a full refund. Again this is a loss of revenue. I am not sure how to be reimbursed for these losses from Shopify Support. According to the Markets Pro documentation, we should be reimbursed for the value of the lost items sold, but will not be reimbursed for any duty fees, or taxes.
The other big problem for us is that support wanted our customer to sign “Docusign” forms stating they never received the order. This is a terrible thing to ask a customer to do. I was really shocked by this, especially since tracking shows the customer did not get the order. The tracking should be enough information needed. Our company is absolutely not going to ask a customer to docusign some legal form. This is unacceptable.
Third - Slow response from Shopify Support with no resolution.
The biggest issue here is that the support provided by Shopify is extremely slow. For example, a customer contacted us to say he got notice that his shipment could not be delivered. Tracking is not simple. You cannot track from Shipstation for some reason like you can with non-Market Pro shipments. And, tracking was through multiple couriers. In this case, USPS, then DHL, then final delivery courier was something called YenExpress. The tracking at Yen showed the courier had an address issue. The address looked correct to us.
I sent a request for help to Shopify Support asking for timely urgent help to get the package delivered and avoid a RTS situation. I gave them the shipping address. It took Shopify 4 days to respond with an email saying they “Were looking into it”. On the 5th day, they said the customer never collected the package so it was being returned to sender. It made me wonder if they even looked at the tracking info which clearly did not say the customer was to collect the package. Customer says they were never asked to go “Collect the package” and the tracking clearly had indicated that the courier had a problem with the delivery address.
Before we enabled Markets Pro, when an issue like this came up, we would call support at DHL and they nearly always found a way to get the package delivered. Not sure why Shopify Support can’t handle this.
This is our typical experience with Shopify support.
SUMMARY
The promotion of Markets Pro to our company was fierce and aggressive by the Shopify salespeople. They promised a great experience and automatic everything. The biggest thing was that Markets Pro was supposed to eliminate our risk of lost packages, delivery issues, and problems with currency conversion, duty fees and taxes.
Yes, it does handle currency conversion, duty fees, custom forms, and tax perfectly. It restricts products that you can’t sell to certain countries (ie wood items to Australia for example).
It does not handle problems that come up well.
Issues with labels not being produced are never figured out by us or by Shopify support.
Issues with lost packages are not handled well or in a timely manner.
Returns or Exchanges are not easily handled either.
Tracking is not easy to do for DHL Ecommerce.
Reconciling Market Pro orders with the Payouts is very time-consuming and difficult.
There are definitely revenue losses due to the following:
Extra time and effort put in by the shipping team to get Markets Pro orders shipped. Partially because it does not integrate well with Shipstation, partially because we have to sometimes do a workaround to get an order shipped.
Shopify requires you to jump through tedious, time-consuming hoops to get reimbursed for a lost package. Even so much as requiring the customer to docusign a legal statement that they did not receive the package even though their own tracking shows it was not delivered.
If you have to refund the customer, you will not be reimbursed for any duty or taxes at all. This is their policy.
Will we continue with Market Pro?
Short answer is “yes” but it’s complicated. We have not decided if it is worth the hassles and revenue loss yet. Revenue gains from having more international customers may be enough to overcome all the problems but we are not certain of this yet.