Why was my Etsy customer charged a different amount for shipping than they should have been?
Typically, the amount that you charge your customer for shipping in your store is identical to the amount that you’re charged in Printify. However, due to an Etsy technical limitation, there are 2 situations in which the customer won’t be charged the same amount for shipping.
This article provides information about our recommended solutions that will minimize the effect this has on your bottom line.
Your Etsy customer will be charged a different amount for shipping in the following situations:
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If an order contains multiple products that don’t share the same shipping profile (this includes products from different Print Providers)
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If the ordered product has multiple product variants that have a different shipping rate (due to size/weight differences)
Orders consisting of multiple products that don’t share the same shipping profile
Typically, when an order contains products that are of the same product type, and are also printed by the same Print Provider, the total shipping cost will be as follows: full shipping fee for the first item and reduced shipping fee for any additional item.
Conversely, if an order consists of products that are not of the same product type and/or are printed by different Print Providers – the full shipping fee will be applied to each of the products, since they will be shipped in separate packages.
However, due to a technical limitation on the Etsy side, a reduced shipping rate will automatically be used in all Etsy orders of multiple products, even if the products are not the same product type and/or are fulfilled by different Print Providers.
As a consequence, if an order consists of multiple products, then in some cases the Etsy store customer is charged a lower shipping fee than they should have been.
Since it isn’t possible to achieve full shipping fee accuracy due to the mentioned limitation, we recommend that you make the following changes, which will effectively mean that some customers are charged slightly more, and some are charged slightly less than they should be. The end outcome of this is that your bottom line is not affected because they cancel each other out.
Recommended solutions
Use one of the following workaround strategies to avoid affecting your profit margin:
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Manually increase the “Additional item” shipping fee on Etsy (we recommend increasing it by 50% of the difference between the regular shipping fee and the reduced shipping fee, for each shipping region).
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Raise your product retail prices slightly, so that any shipping discrepancies can be absorbed.
Products with different sizes, each with a different shipping rate
Products such as mugs, posters and canvases sometimes have a different shipping rate for each product size, due to differences in weight. Or, in the case of postcards, different shipping rates depending on the number of postcards (a single postcard or a package of 10).
Unfortunately, due to a technical limitation, only one shipping rate can be assigned to a Printify product at the time of publishing, even if the product has multiple product variants with different shipping rates.
Our system will automatically calculate the average shipping rate and assign that to all variants of the product. This means that your Etsy customers will be either slightly overcharged or undercharged for shipping when purchasing these products.
Recommended solutions
Use one of the following workaround strategies to avoid affecting your profit margin:
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Increase/decrease the price of different product variants accordingly, so that the customer ends up paying closer to the actual price in total.
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Consider creating separate product listings for each shipping profile (this would be especially useful for postcards). For example, one product listing for a single postcard (the customer will still be able to select their preferred quantity) and one listing for the package of 10 postcards.