US to UK (great britain) postage consistently too low

[3DCuser]

For a while now, the cart charges UK customers less that what the USPS says it should cost for Priority Mail International. Such as, charging $40 when the USPS site says $55.

The shipping still works, and the package goes from US to UK with no problem. But paypal says only $40 was needed for the postage. I keep having to refund the extra postage that was paid by the customer, and I'm sure that some customers have been turned away by the higher postage.

So I just deleted the USPS Priority Mail International option, and re-added it, in case there was a problem. Will see what happens.

I also checked, and you can do a negative markup by putting a minus (-) sign before the markup amount. So if the deleted-and-redone trick does not work, I'll try making a USPS Priority Mail International option just for UK, and do a "markup" of $-15

[elightbox]

I am confused by your post. You say the cart charges less, then you say you want to do a negative markup! Also, what does PayPal have to do with shipping costs on 3dcart?

If you have your weights set correctly, then 3dcart will send that weight to USPS and get the rate back. If the customer combines items, then it will send the combined weights. The cart does not do too well with sizes and dimensional weight though.

[Toobusy]

elightbox, not always true. In theory it should work, I'm constantly refunding over charges on shipping or eating the difference on my international orders. Not sure why, weights are correct, etc. but it's one or the other, rarely is it accurate.

[3DCuser]

Yes, for US to UK, the cart tells the customer the same price as the USPS site. But when I go to paypal to buy this shipping, it is $7 to $15 less. So I refund this difference.

I guess it is good that paypal is getting these lower rates.

[3DCuser]

Have discovered you can't add a second US-to-UK priority mail international, unless you first exclude the first priority mail international from UK.

So, after excluding UK from my overall priority mail international, and then adding a second priority mail international to UK only, and making this one "-12" markup (negative markup), then UK customers see the actual cost that is charged from paypal.

[Mustang394]

I think what you are seeing is this, based on weight 3dcart is returning the price based on USPS web site prices which are lower then at the counter price, PayPal is giving you a commercial or a commercial+ price which is again lower. Unless you are an extremely high volume USPS shipper you can't qualify for that pricing on your own. Your benefiting from PayPal's huge user base and discount's. Your work around is the only way to fix the difference, you can also do a negative percentage the same way, just check the percentage box. I use a percentage discount. I set it a little higher then the actual postage amount to pay for insurance.

[Toobusy]

I know on domestic rates with paypal I get charged $11.30 for a medium flat rate box, through shippingEasy my cost is $10.65, so even paypal rates are on the high end for me, you don't want to talk about overseas rates like to Germany etc. but the rates being pulled by the cart left me holding the bag for almot $20 difference until support worked up a custom plan for my overseas stuff. That's not completely accurate either but I'll adjust those costs again since the latest rate change. Support contacted me and said they'd attempt to work on something for us, but I've not heard anything back yet, it's only been a few days though.