The ShipStation / PayPal integration gives us significantly lower UPS label fees compared to our previous negotiated rate.

However, starting in April 2024 we've seen nearly 100 bogus adjustments charged for those UPS labels. Each time those funds are debited we get an email from PayPal with the subject line "A carrier adjusted your shipping label".

When we open the Adjustment detail page in PayPal Shipping, as shown below there's always a bogus "Not a Number" (NaN) indication, suggesting there's a bug in the PayPal / ShipStation integration.

Unfortunately we've encountered an unhelpful ShipStation support rep who won't escalate the issue, insisting that we submit a long form with photographic evidence (that does not exist) to dispute every charge.

All of this is configured in the PayPal Shipping center, so this is certainly *not* a problem with the shopping cart.

If anyone can suggest further steps to help resolve this we'd be grateful!

- Paul D.

Hi Paul, this is probably one of the pitfalls of shipping on a UPS account you do not control.
So why not connect your store to ship station and leave paypal out of it?
The ship station rates are super low.

Thanks,
David

Dave, that seems like a really good suggestion.

For merchants who do not have good negotiated rates with UPS, does anyone know if the cart can access the lower, real-time ShipStation rates for UPS and USPS - so that buyers see accurate shipping costs before they check out?

The inability for buyers to see accurate shipping costs has been the big problem with the free version of ShipStation you get with PayPal.

Edited to Add:

ShipStation calls its real-time buyer shipping cost feature "Checkout Rates". Their online article (https://help.shipstation.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410990571291-Connect-Checkout-Rates-to-Your-Store) says that this feature supports only a few costly, subscription-based carts.

I was unable to schedule a call with a ShipStation rep to get clarification... their online calendar says that nobody is available for this entire month (!). So it looks like the awful support you get with the free ShipStation / PayPal integration is also a feature of the paid versions.

Makes me really appreciate our Ecommerce Templates tech support staff...

There is a setting (I expect you might be aware of) $discountshippingups=-10; that you can set aggressive discounts, but it's for all services.
I was able to modify a back end file to assign discounts for each service and that's how I am handling the rates shown to customers.

David

Dave, we're currently using that line in our includes file "$discountshippingups=-38;" combined with querying the UPS published rate to approximate our ShipStation / PayPal discounted rates.

This works reasonably well for UPS Ground shipments to the Continental US, but it overcharges by as much as 300% for services such as UPS Worldwide Expedited to population centers in Canada and Air shipments to the US. As a result we're seeing drastically lower sales outside of the US.

When Canadian customers buy, we calculate the actual rate in the PayPal Shipping admin. For orders to population centers we generally call each customer to advise that we'll be capturing a lower amount than authorized in the cart - typically (say) US$ 38 instead of US$ 138.

However, customers in remote regions of Canada often see very little savings versus those estimated rates shown when they checkout.

We've looked for a better solution but can't seem to find anything at this point.

Now that the PayPal / ShipStation integration seems to have broken - result in recurring overcharges - this has become a more serious issue for us.

I can probably show you how to discount each service individually.
I'll need to test it on .php and it would require a small mod to one of the back end files.
David

Dave, the offer is appreciated.

However, depending on the delivery address the international and air delivery rates we calculate using a discount off UPS Published Rates seem to differ widely from the ShipStation discounted rates. Therefore it probably won't help us to apply different discounts based only on the type of UPS service.

For example, the Published Rates for UPS Worldwide Expedited to Canada don't differ too widely by delivery address.

However, our ShipStation labels for the same item can cost under $40 to Canadian population centers vs. (say) $140 to customers in rural Newfoundland.

Sadly, it looks like pre-sales support for paid ShipStation plans is as awful as it is for the "free" ShipStation / PayPal integration.

Per their reply below, the rep doesn't seem to grasp that UPS would never disclose ShipStation API credentials to a third party.

It would be funny if it weren't so frustrating - and it definitely doesn't encourage us to move to a paid ShipStation plan.

============

Hi, we're currently using the free ShipStation / PayPal integration and are interested in moving to the paid version of ShipStation. We typically ship 100 to 200 packages per month.

Our shopping cart software is Ecommerce Templates (https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/).

It's understood that the "Checkout Rates" integration supports only a few subscription carts like BigCommerce and Shopify, but not our Ecommerce Templates cart.

For merchants who use a shopping cart such as ours, with a paid ShipStation "Growth" subscription plan are we able to get the UPS credentials (Client ID, Client Secret, and UPS Shipper Number) needed for our cart to query the discounted ShipStation "Checkout Rates" as buyers check out?

If not, what workaround (other than free and flat-rate shipping) do your customers use?

Thanks in advance.

=================

Hello Paul!

Thank you for reaching out to Shipstation. My name is Dominique, and I am a member of the support team.

I acknowledge your request for an alternative solution for the ecommerce cart discount rate. Regrettably, I must inform you that there are no alternative workarounds available for this issue. Concerning the UPS credentials, I recommend that you contact UPS directly for further assistance.

I appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Wishing you a wonderful day!
Dominique L.

FWIW, I've just tried opening a case with PayPal Merchant Technical support; they've got surprisingly smart, proactive people if you can get their attention.

Since all of the Adjustment logs in PayPal Shipping show bogus "NaN" values, perhaps they'll be willing to take a look.

However I fear that they will hand my case back to the amateurs at ShipStation support.

I understand Paul.
In my mind, you will never get a 100% solution and we just apply discounts and look at over the course of a long period, like 6 months to see what our shipping spend is versus what we collected.
If you focus on a single order, you are going to run yourself ragged...
Just my thoughts...

If you are up to it, you should consider setting up weight based shipping to mimic your rates and do away with pulling rates from UPS.

David

quote:

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FWIW, I've just tried opening a case with PayPal Merchant Technical support; they've got surprisingly smart, proactive people if you can get their attention.

---

I've been dealing with them quite a bit again recently as I've been doing some more work on PayPal Checkout. (For adding Google Pay and Apple Pay for those interested - coming soon.) But I have to say for me they have the best support of any of the payment processors by far. Just saying and all that but I thought it worth giving a thumbs up for the positive.

Vince

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