Shipping plays a major role in your WooCommerce store’s profitability. While UPS is a reliable and widely used carrier, additional charges can increase shipping costs if not accounted for upfront. These charges are often overlooked during rate calculations. To maintain healthy margins and provide customers with accurate pricing, it’s essential to calculate full shipping costs in real time before checkout.
In this article, we’ll break down commonly overlooked UPS surcharges and how the WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin with Print Label helps you account for every cost to ensure transparent, profitable shipping.
Article Contains:
- What Are Hidden UPS Shipping Charges?
- Common hidden fees that WooCommerce store owners may encounter:
- How Hidden Charges Affect Your WooCommerce Store
- How the PluginHive WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin Helps
- Best Practices to Hide UPS Charges in WooCommerce
- Real-World Scenario
- Conclusion
- FAQs
What are hidden UPS shipping charges?
Extra charges added by UPS that aren’t always visible during checkout. These “accessorial fees” can quietly inflate your shipping expenses and eat into your profit margins if you’re not careful.
Common hidden fees that WooCommerce store owners may encounter:
1. Residential Surcharge
UPS applies a residential surcharge when delivering to home addresses. This surcharge compensates for the extra time and effort required to deliver in residential neighborhoods, which often involves more stops and longer routes compared to commercial deliveries.
Domestic Fees:
- Ground Services: $6.10
- Air Services: $6.55
International Fees:
- Standard Services: $6.20
- International Air and 3 Day Select: $6.55
- Worldwide Express Freight Services: $216.25
These fees are added automatically based on UPS’s address classification system.
2. Delivery Area Surcharge (DAS)
Some ZIP codes, especially in rural or less accessible locations, are flagged by UPS for extra delivery charges. These areas often involve more mileage, fewer deliveries per route, or special routing.
Domestic Fees:
- Ground Commercial: $4.20
- Ground Residential: $6.15
- Ground Residential Extended: $8.30
- Air Commercial: $4.20
- Air Residential: $6.15
- Air Residential Extended: $8.30
International Fees:
- Delivery Area Surcharge (Import Services): $4.10 to $5.20 (based on service type)
This fee can surprise store owners when the checkout page shows one cost, but UPS later charges more based on the delivery location.
3. Fuel Surcharges
Fuel costs constantly fluctuate, and UPS adds those changes to shippers via a UPS fuel surcharge, which is a percentage added to the total shipping cost.
4. Address Correction Fee
If there’s an error or missing detail in a shipping address, UPS charges an address correction fee. This could be a missing apartment number, a misspelled street name, or even a wrong ZIP code.
Fee:
- UPS Air Services: $23.50 per package
- UPS Ground Services: $23.50 per package
- Maximum Charge Per Shipment: $164.50
5. Extended Area Surcharge
Even further than DAS zones, extended area surcharges apply to extremely remote or offshore locations. These can include rural Alaska, some island ZIP codes, or remote mountain towns.
Fees on – International Shipments: Greater of $57.00 per shipment or $0.57 per pound
6. Oversize & Additional Handling Fees
UPS imposes additional fees on packages that exceed specific size or weight thresholds to account for the extra resources required to handle them.
- Additional Handling Fee: Applied to packages that meet any of the following criteria:
- Weight: Packages over 50 lbs (22.68 kg) for domestic shipments or over 70 lbs (31.75 kg) for international shipments.
- Dimensions: Packages with the longest side exceeding 48 inches (121 cm) or the second-longest side exceeding 30 inches (76 cm).
- Packaging: Items not fully encased in corrugated cardboard, cylindrical items, or those encased in metal or wood.
- Fee: $34.00 per package
- Large Package Surcharge: Applied when a package’s combined length and girth [(2 × width) + (2 × height)] exceeds 130 inches (330 cm) but does not exceed the maximum UPS size limit.
- Fee: $220.00 per package
- Fee: $220.00 per package
- Oversized Pallet Handling Surcharge: For freight shipments requiring special handling due to size.
- Fee: $1,375.00 per pallet
How Hidden Shipping Charges Affect Your WooCommerce Store
Relying on estimated shipping costs or flat rates can lead to unexpected expenses that hurt your business in multiple ways:
- Increased Fulfillment Costs: Without clear visibility into surcharges like residential delivery or Delivery Area Surcharges (DAS), you might unknowingly set shipping prices too low, only to discover the actual costs when the UPS bill arrives.
- Reduced Profit Margins: When you don’t account for all applicable fees upfront, you’re left absorbing the difference, especially damaging for products with thin margins.
- Customer Dissatisfaction: Inaccurate shipping estimates or delays caused by misjudged services can lead to poor experiences, complaints, and lost customer trust.
With the WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin with Print Label, you get real-time UPS rates, including every applicable surcharge, directly at checkout. This eliminates guesswork and helps protect your profits while delivering a reliable experience for your customers.
How the PluginHive WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin Helps
The WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin with Print Label ensures that you stay on top of UPS’ hidden fees, offering real-time, accurate rate calculations directly from UPS. Let’s look at how the plugin helps eliminate hidden fees and streamline your WooCommerce shipping:
Real-Time Rate Calculation (With Surcharges Included)
When you enable the Real-time rates option in the plugin settings, the shipping costs shown at checkout come straight from UPS. This means the shipping rates at checkout are transparent, and you and your customers see the true cost upfront.
Access to Negotiated UPS Rates
If you have negotiated rates with UPS, you can enable Negotiated rates in the plugin settings, the plugin automatically integrates them into your store.
Enable Residential Address Detection
You can enable the residential delivery option when required. The plugin also automatically detects residential addresses and applies the residential surcharge only when necessary. The plugin also provides address correction options at checkout for customers to review and select
Enable Saturday Delivery When Required
If you offer Saturday delivery, the plugin allows you to easily enable this option when. Make sure it is not enabled when there are no requirements for Saturday delivery.
Check Your Packaging Dimensions
The plugin allows you to set package size and weight limits, ensuring your products don’t exceed UPS’s thresholds for oversized fees or additional handling fees.
Calculate the Cost while generating package(s)
You can calculate the cost again inside the order page to make sure the cost is correct and no hidden fees have been added.
Test Various Shipping Scenarios
Before going live, you should test different shipping scenarios using the plugin to preview total costs based on various options. This helps ensure that your rates are accurate and complete at checkout. If you encounter any difficulties during testing, you can always reach out to the support team for assistance.
To ensure that the plugin in your store is fetching the correct UPS rates and to avoid any extra charges, you can watch this video: How to Verify UPS Shipping Rates at Checkout.
Best Practices to Avoid Hidden UPS Charges in WooCommerce
- Restrict Saturday delivery to products or regions where it’s essential.
- Use standardized packaging to avoid UPS’s additional handling charges.
- Offer address validation and correction to prevent accidental correction fees and residential surcharges.
- Clearly communicate shipping policies to customers, including potential charges, surcharges, returns, and how fees are applied. Ensure this information is easily accessible and visible at the cart or checkout page, so customers are well-informed before placing their order.
Real-World Scenario: Affordable Product with Impactful Additional Charges
You’re selling phone cases for $9.99 on your WooCommerce store. To keep it simple, you set a flat shipping rate of $4.50. At checkout, everything looks fine, the shipping seems affordable, and the customer completes the purchase.
But here’s what happens behind the scenes:
- The order is going to a residential address, which adds a $6.10 residential surcharge.
- The ZIP code is flagged as a remote area, adding another $8.30 delivery area surcharge.
- On top of that, UPS applies a 31.25% fuel surcharge on the base rate of $4.50, which is $1.41.
Suddenly, the actual shipping cost isn’t $4.50, it’s $20.31. That’s more than double the price of the product itself. If you don’t catch this ahead of time, you either absorb the loss or surprise your customer later with added charges, both of which can hurt your business.
The Solution:
With the WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin, you don’t have to rely on flat rates or make guesses.
- When you enable the real-time rates option in the plugin settings, your store pulls the actual UPS rates, including all surcharges, straight from UPS.
- You don’t have to check the UPS site or calculate anything manually.
- If you want to include fees like residential or delivery area surcharges, simply enable them in the plugin settings; the plugin automatically adds them to the shipping cost shown at checkout.
This way, your customers see the full, accurate shipping cost upfront. You protect your margins, avoid unexpected fees, and deliver a transparent shopping experience every time.
Conclusion
Hidden UPS shipping charges can affect your WooCommerce store’s profits and lead to unhappy customers. The WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin helps you see the actual shipping cost, including any additional surcharges, right at checkout, giving you and your customers full transparency before the order is placed.
Stay ahead of hidden fees and provide a smooth shipping experience! For assistance, our support team is available at PluginHive Support.
FAQs
- What happens if I don’t pay my UPS invoice?
If the invoice isn’t paid by the receiver or third party, the original shipper will be billed a refusal fee along with the shipping charges. Additionally, a processing fee may apply if there’s a missing or invalid account number or if the package is charged to an unauthorized recipient.
- What happens if my package exceeds UPS’s size or weight limits?
If your package exceeds UPS’s size or weight limits, UPS’s additional handling fees may apply. The WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin allows you to set size and weight restrictions for your products, preventing any packages from triggering these extra charges.
- Will the plugin help with international shipments?
Yes, the plugin supports international shipping, including applicable surcharges based on destination countries.
- Does the plugin support UPS negotiated rates?
Yes, if you have negotiated rates with UPS. Once you enable the negotiated rates in the plugin settings, the plugin automatically integrates them into your store’s shipping calculations.
- Does the WooCommerce UPS plugin include fuel surcharges?
Yes, the plugin includes fuel surcharges directly in the shipping rate, so customers see the exact shipping cost at checkout, avoiding any surprises.
