Regional Support: Shipping (UK)

[Victor]

Learn more about handling shipping and fulfilment while running your Shopify store in the UK.

This thread is part of the Regional Support threads offered for merchants in the United Kingdom. To see which other topics are available, you can visit the UK hub here.

Merchants based in the United Kingdom can offer both manual and third-party carrier calculated shipping rates to their customers at checkout. This second option allows UK merchants to link their FedEx and UPS accounts to Shopify and offer live rates from these providers at checkout.

Please note that the live rates can only be enabled if the merchant has the carrier calculated shipping feature enabled, which is a standard feature of our Advanced and Plus plans. However, this feature can also be added to a merchant's store for an additional cost of $20 USD per month if they are on the Shopify plan. Merchants on the Shopify plan can instead have this feature enabled at no additional cost if their subscrition is paid for on an annual basis. If you’d like to add this feature to your account, please contact our support team.

Outside of the integrated options of FedEx and UPS, there are a number of third-party applications that allow UK merchants to offer live rates from other shipping providers. Some apps will also allow you to buy shipping labels for different providers in the UK. These include:

• Royal Mail Shipping Extension (includes live rates from Royal Mail that appear at checkout).
• Starshipit Shipping & Tracking (includes live rates from the likes of DHL and DPD at checkout, as well as the ability to buy shipping labels from numerous carriers, including Royal Mail).
• Zenstores - UK Shipping App (includes the ability to buy shipping labels from numerous carriers, including DHL, DPD, Hermes, Royal Mail and Parcelforce).
• Multi Carrier Shipping Label (includes the ability to buy shipping labels from UK-based carriers including Royal Mail, Parcel Force & DHL)

Royal Mail also offer their Click & Drop app, which can be installed in the form of a sales channel in the Shopify admin. This app will allow you to easily buy and print Royal Mail shipping labels for your orders. You can refer to Royal Mail’s setup instructions to install the app in your store.

If you’re looking for more information or direct assistance with any of these apps, we recommend contacting the developers of the app directly. The developers build and support these apps and their contact information can be found on the app’s page on the Shopify App Store.

If you have a question or comment to make about shipping when based in the United Kingdom, please post it below.

[Victor]

Hi @UnSealed,

Thank you for getting in touch, and for detailing your current shipping setup. It sounds like you are using shipping profiles to differentiate between the different types of products you sell, and one of the intended behaviours of using shipping profiles is that shipping rates for multiple profiles will be combined at checkout if the customer has chosen products from one profile or more to add to their cart. I also believe that the reason why the local delivery and Click & Collect options are not available when products from different profiles are combined is because these shipping/ collection options have not been made available to all products in the customer's cart.

Can you tell me if the products you have are shipped from the same location? If the customer does have a mixture of products from different profiles, such as eco-home products and refills, what shipping rates and options would you want to appear?

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Amels]

Hey, @UnSealed 

Unless you're on the most expensive Shopify plan or you pay monthly for a shipping app like Better Shipping the shipping profiles are always going to be added together at checkout. The only hack I've found around this is having one shipping profile making it weight-based and inflating the weight of certain products that need to be charged more. This way a flat rate shipping rate will be calculated (the highest one) and even if the customer also adds smaller items into the basket it will all be under one amount.

This will of course affect the weight in any of the third-party shipping solutions. For Example, if you use Click & Drop the inflated weight will have to be adjusted to the correct weight so you can pay the correct shipping price.

I hope that makes sense.

[UnSealed]

Hey Amels,

Thanks for the reply - i suspected that was going to be the only way unfortunately but was hoping there was some free miracle work round !! I just feel awful charging £3 postage on a product that only costs £2.50 and plus the customer will see how much the postage actually was on the postage label.....

But my other problem, and i guess more urgent to sort is that it lets items that are not eligible for shipping go through checkout to be shipped if there is also an item in the basket that is eligible for shipping......

[UnSealed]

Hi Victor,

Yes all products are shipped from the same location. So i guess different shipping profiles will not work for me then ???

What i would like it to do in an ideal world is... if a customer puts a shipable product as well as a non shipable product in their basket then at checkout it defaults to click and collect or home delivery (If they are in the catchment area ) for all items.

Hope that makes sense

thanks Kayleigh

[Victor]

Hi @UnSealed,

I would say if you do not want the shipping rates to stack as they do currently, then moving the products to the same shipping profile may be the best option. Shipping rates will always combine if the products in the cart are in different profiles, and/ or are fulfilled from multiple locations.

In terms of your current set up, do you currently have the local delivery and Click & Collect options set as manual rates, or are you using either Shopify's local delivery feature or any third-party apps?

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Alexander_Picke]

Shopify,

What on earth have you been doing the past few years? Absolutely unacceptable to suggest that you can't have this issue solved immediately. The fact of the matter is that this problem earns you extra money at the expense of your core customer base, via higher paid price plans and paid app commissions.  

Can we get a time frame on Northern Ireland being taken out of the rest of the UK and Highlands & Islands (Zone 1-4) etc being added to the BASIC SHOPIFY PLAN.  If not, we are migrating multiple shops to another platform within the week. 

[Victor]

Hi @Alexander_Picke,

Thank you for getting in touch and I can sympathize with your concerns on this issue. This is something many merchants have requested and I know how impactful not being able to split the United Kingdom into more specific countries and regions is for merchants in the UK. I do know that this is currently being looked at by our development team, and that we hope to have this changed in the not-so-distant future, but at this time I do not have any timeline on when this change might be made. I will be sure to submit your feedback and will post an update in this thread as soon as I hear more.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[em667]

Wonderful summary! Thank you.

[Peng15]

Any more news on this please

[philosophyalice]

So shopify has now started adding England / Wales / Scotland / Northern Ireland to addresses in some weird way over the last couple of days.

When I say 'in some weird way' I mean that you can't see this on the admin panel but the country appears in our order notification emails.  I find this very odd and am currently in a chat with shopify support to try to find out what is going on. 

Obviously we do need a mechanism to identify orders from UK regions but I am quite sure most people don't want 'England' etc added to UK addresses as it just looks rubbish (London, England!) and potentially confusing if it makes its way on to shipping labels which is now happening for us as it is showing up in the address imported to our fulfilment service. 

I wish shopify would be a bit more transparent when making changes, or even consult users to ensure changes don't have negative effects.

Alice

[Lagruga]

@philosophyalice - I hope this is beta only, please do keep us posted with your findings - many thanks.

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@philosophyalice wrote:

So shopify has now started adding England / Wales / Scotland / Northern Ireland to addresses in some weird way over the last couple of days.

When I say 'in some weird way' I mean that you can't see this on the admin panel but the country appears in our order notification emails.  I find this very odd and am currently in a chat with shopify support to try to find out what is going on. 

Obviously we do need a mechanism to identify orders from UK regions but I am quite sure most people don't want 'England' etc added to UK addresses as it just looks rubbish (London, England!) and potentially confusing if it makes its way on to shipping labels which is now happening for us as it is showing up in the address imported to our fulfilment service. 

I wish shopify would be a bit more transparent when making changes, or even consult users to ensure changes don't have negative effects.

Alice

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@philosophyalice wrote:

So shopify has now started adding England / Wales / Scotland / Northern Ireland to addresses in some weird way over the last couple of days.

When I say 'in some weird way' I mean that you can't see this on the admin panel but the country appears in our order notification emails.  I find this very odd and am currently in a chat with shopify support to try to find out what is going on. 

Obviously we do need a mechanism to identify orders from UK regions but I am quite sure most people don't want 'England' etc added to UK addresses as it just looks rubbish (London, England!) and potentially confusing if it makes its way on to shipping labels which is now happening for us as it is showing up in the address imported to our fulfilment service. 

I wish shopify would be a bit more transparent when making changes, or even consult users to ensure changes don't have negative effects.

Alice

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[philosophyalice]

So today shopify has confirmed

"Recently we updated our shipping settings to divide the UK into 4 provinces. This is so you can set different shipping for Scotland, Northern Ireland etc. "

However you cannot see the province on the order page, it has been added by shopify without showing when you view an order on your store.  

Unfortunately this means that now our shipping labels are being printed showing 'England' / 'Scotland' etc and I have pointed out how inappropriate this is.  I can't see a workaround because we need to include the province info when this is a legitimate part of the address.

I have fed back how unimpressed I am that they seem to be unaware of local practice and that this is a problem!  (Also the fact that they have made this change without telling anyone and no way to view the actual address on the order on shopify (only in notifications).  And it still doesn't solve the Highlands and Islands issue...)

Please be aware and feed back to shopify if you are also concerned about this!

[St3v3]

I cant see the setting where the UK is now split into different areas, even if I search for them it doesnt find them 😞

[philosophyalice]

If you go into the settings and shipping rates and select United Kingdom there are now 5 zones, England, Wales, Scotland, NI and BFPO.  Not that this sorts out the Highlands and Islands issue.  But they are there now.

Note that you cannot see the region on the customer order as this doesn't show the "province" which is where shopify has put the zone.

[St3v3]

Had to delete it then add again for it to show. Thanks

[Victor]

Hey folks,

As some of you have pointed out, the UK shipping zone now appears with five subdivisions—England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and British Forces. I knew work was being done on this issue and I can see from some of the posts here there have been some issues, so I am actively communicating your feedback to our development team about what you are seeing. I will seek to keep everyone updated with the latest and please keep feel free to keep sharing any feedback you have on this here so that I can pass it along.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Luccardo]

Hi Victor,

As a UK shopify customer, I would like to also say how this makes no sense. UK shipping is complicated enough and rates are determined by Post Code, not solely by 'Province'. Eg. Some Scotland post codes fall into UK mainland 'standard' rates, yet others which may not even be that much further away have a much higher rate with couriers ( I am not speaking about Royal Mail, personally I do not use them), yet all are still in the United Kingdom.

As most of merchants in the UK, I use CCS, which comes at an extra cost, then we have to add an app, again at another cost, to precisely create shipping rates based on our couriers rates for different areas.

Whilst I now accept this and have doing this for years, what I do not like is not been able to REMOVE the unnecessary wording and drop down option of the PROVINCES on my theme's shipping calculator. I have reached out to them and they say this is a Shopify thing. Even when i remove the check boxes of the so called provinces, this does not adjust the drop down menu which has suddenly appeared within my shipping calculator. If anyone knows how to do this, please let us know.....?

It completely conflicts with the shipping setting I have set, which I, like others have to pay for. 

Again, please advise if there is a way to take out the province element.

Maybe it would help if Shopify asked for some feedback from UK customers as to the insights on UK shipping.

I hope to hear from you.

Regards

[philosophyalice]

Hi Victor

thank you for passing the feedback on.  I think the key issues are

(1) complete lack of communication or documentation from shopify for a major change which has a significant impact on users - I had to have two long chats with support to even find out what had happened

(2) shopify changing something which we cannot see or edit - the "province" field is being added behind the scenes and doesn't appear when you view a customer's order in shopify store admin and we cannot edit this

(3) complete lack of understanding from shopify about local practice.  Our shipping labels are now being printed saying "London, England" which makes us look as if we are a retailer from an overseas country who doesn't understand the UK and what addresses look like, when we are British and that is part of our brand.  There are also the political issues too (no customer complaints yet but some people feel very strongly about the union!)

(4) as the earlier reply points out, this doesn't even solve the problem with shipping zones as these are based on postcode not whether the address is in Scotland/Wales/NI etc (although it may help with Brexit related issues to do with NI)

I really don't understand why shopify does this sort of thing, it is incredibly frustrating and very poor customer service.  We have a meeting with Magento next week because we are just getting fed up with the poor service, lack of concern for retailers in Europe and lack of control over the platform.

Alice

[hcnewhouse]

Totally agree @philosophyalice - its been designed and implemented by some techie in North America who hasn't researched the UK storeholder market.  

Far better would be to split the UK into counties and include the Islands.  Here's a list Shopify....

Bath and North East Somerset
Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Bristol
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
Cornwall
County Durham
Cumbria
Derbyshire
Devon
East Riding of Yorkshire
East Sussex
Essex
Gloucestershire
Greater London
Greater Manchester
Hampshire
Herefordshire
Hertfordshire
Isle of Wight
Isles of Scilly
Kent
Lancashire
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
Merseyside
Norfolk
North Somerset
North Yorkshire
Northamptonshire
Northumberland
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Rutland
Shropshire
Somerset
South Gloucestershire
South Yorkshire
Staffordshire
Suffolk
Surrey
Tyne & Wear
Warwickshire
West Midlands
West Sussex
West Yorkshire
WIltshire
Worcestershire
Aberdeenshire
Angus
Argyll & Bute
Ayrshire
Banffshire
Berwickshire
Borders
Caithness
Clackmannanshire
Dumfries & Galloway
Dunbartonshire
East Ayrshire
East Dunbartonshire
East Lothian
East Renfrewshire
Fife
Highland
Inverclyde
Kincardineshire
Midlothian
Moray
North Ayrshire
North Lanarkshire
Orkney
Perth & KInross
Renfrewshire
Shetland
South Ayrshire
South Lanarkshire
Stirlingshire
West Dunbartonshire
West Lothian
Western Isles
Blaenau Gwent
Bridgend
Caerphilly
Cardiff
Carmarthenshire
Ceredigion
Conwy
Denbighshire
Flintshire
Gwynedd
Isle of Anglesey
Merthyr Tydfil
Monmouthshire
Neath Port Talbot
Newport
Pembrokeshire
Powy
Rhondda Cynon Taff
Swansea
Torfaen
Vale of Glamorgan
Wrexham
Antrim
Armagh
Down
Fermanagh
Londonderry
Tyrone

[Victor]

Hi @Luccardo,

Thank you for getting back in touch and detailing your issues with these changes here. I know that the inability to split the UK shipping zone into regions and countries has been a long term grievance of British merchants and one of the reasons for the delay in making this change was the potential for these sort of issues when the zone was split. I know that our development team are continuing to work on the implementation of this, and I am making sure to communicate the feedback you and others have shared here so that we are fully aware of the issues that need to be ironed out. I will be sure to post updates when I have them.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care