Why am I charged more for shipping than what the customer paid?

Shopify Discussion
1

Hello Everyone.

I’m new to this platform.. A customer paid 4.90 for shipping . When I went to buy the labels. I was charged $12.can someone explain why Im Paying 12 when the customer paid 4.90for the shipping. Why is there two shipping charges?

2

Hi, @Deneise .

Are you using Shopify Shipping to receive carrier-calculated rates on your store? If so, the following factors may be causing the price difference that you’re seeing:

  1. Default package: Shopify’s shipping settings include a default package type that is used alongside your product weight, shipping service chosen, and customer address to calculate shipping rates. If your store is located in the US or Canada, you also have the option of adding additional package types on your shipping settings.

    When the system calculates shipping rates on checkout, the default package is always used to calculate the final shipping cost, even if you’ve added alternative package types within your Shopify admin’s shipping rates. You can however, select any of your other saved package types when you purchase your shipping label once the order has come through on your Shopify admin. Because of this, shipping costs between what the customer paid on checkout versus the shipping label you pay for may vary. On checkout, the customer would have their order calculated against the default package type, whereas when the order comes through on your end, if you’ve selected a different package type, then the shipping price may increase or decrease.

    At this stage, there isn’t a way for the Shopify admin to natively assign different package types for each orders that come in, although a third-party app like Advanced Shipping Rules or Parcelify should help with this.

  2. Check shipping service and carrier: You can also double check that the shipping service and carrier that the customer chose on checkout was the same one that you also chose when you purchased the shipping label within your Shopify admin. This is because different carriers and services would offer different rates, so a discrepancy may be seen if it doesn’t match.

If you’ve checked for the above and are still unable to pinpoint why the discrepancy occurs, you can get in touch with our live support team so that we can troubleshoot in more detail. To get in touch with our support team, you’ll need to login to your store via our Help Center here. Once logged in, select a topic that best fits your query or situation. From there, you’ll be taken to a page with a list of relevant support articles, and you can scroll to the bottom of that page to select your preferred contact method with our team.

Apart from this matter, how are you getting on with your store? I see you mentioned that you’re new to the platform — welcome to Shopify! To help you build and run your store, just remember that we have a lot of different resources available at your disposal. This includes our Shopify Blog, the Shopify Learn channel, and our YouTube guides and tutorials as listed on our Forum post here. We’re also available here in the Community Forums to help out if you have any other queries.

3

Ok thanks. Buy why am I paying for the labels is what im.confused about. If
the customer paid for shipping why am I paying as well?

4

Great question, @Deneise .

When a customer checks out on your store, they will pay for their products and shipping altogether in one transaction. This payment is then captured by your payment provider and paid out to your nominated bank account.

From the workflow explained above, you can see that the customer’s payment for shipping isn’t collected by Shopify to pay for the shipping labels — as explained, their payment for shipping is sent through to your bank account directly via your payment provider. So when you’re purchasing a shipping label via Shopify Shipping on your admin, although the system is charging you for the labels, this cost should be covered by the customer’s shipping payment that is in your bank account.

5

Ok. Thank-you. I get it. I just need to make sure the right package is
chosen. I also saw where a customer received free shipping. I appreciate
the clarification!

Thanks

6

My pleasure, @Deneise !

If you need further help in taking a closer look at your shipping settings to make sure that you have all your shipping rates set up accordingly, our live support team will be happy to lend a hand. Feel free to contact them via our Help Center here.

And as you continue to work on your store, if you run into anything else that you need help clarifying, you can reach back out in our Forums here so that our wider Community can help out.

7

Thank-you!!