Shipping should always default to cheapest option unless customer chooses another option

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Joshua Artman

• April 17, 2020 04:38

We are regularly getting customer complaints that our site is charging them the "higher" priced shipping option.  After talking through the process with multiple customers, what is happening is that they add an item to their cart, for example our calendar, which can ship USPS First Class.  They then add another item to their cart, which bumps the cart contents up out of first class to priority mail.  They check the cart for the price of the shipping and decide to remove the 2nd item from their cart.  The cart stays stuck on Priority Mail, even though the customer never actually selected Priority Mail and with the 2nd item removed, First Class mail is now an option again.

We have the same thing happen with Priority Mail vs UPS Ground, where a customer adds an item to their cart which is to large for Priority Mail, so UPS Ground is shown as the default shipping option, they decide they do not want to pay that much for the shipping and remove that item, but it sticks to UPS Ground which is more expensive, even though the items left in the cart could ship Priority Mail.

It makes sense for a shipping method to stick IF a customer has actually clicked and chosen a specific shipping method, but if all they are doing is adding items to their cart and checking the shipping costs, unless they do specifically choose a particular shipping method, it should not stick to any particular shipping method.

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  Clayton P

  • April 17, 2020 12:04

  IMO, having an option to force the customer to select a shipping option should be a setting.  Our store defaults to the cheapest option, which makes sense, but I'd really like to have the ability to set the cart to force the customer to pick an option at checkout.

  That's the way our previous store worked and we had less issues as the customer had to make the final choice, not the system.  It is true that the customer can change it to whatever they like, but at the minimum the initial choice should be make by the customer.

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  Joshua Artman

  • April 17, 2020 21:08

  I would agree that there should be a setting to force the customer to choose the shipping method in Checkout.  In the cart, I am torn; defaulting to showing the cheapest method does make sense in the cart to make checking the total cost to the customer easier, but the ultimate choice of shipping methods at checkout should be made by the customer, not the system.

  We THOUGHT ours was always choosing the cheapest shipping method, until I discovered this issue.  I contacted AC support and confirmed that this is the way it works for all stores.  Once a customer goes to the cart and they calculate the shipping, a shipping method is selected for them automatically, unless that method is no longer available, the system stays stuck on that shipping method, even if the cart contents change and cheaper shipping options are available for the new contents in the cart.  This not only makes it so customers end up paying for a more expensive shipping option unless they pay careful attention, it also means that if they are price shopping, the shipping rate shown is higher than it actually would need to be.

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