WooCommerce Shipping

After activating this plugin, our payment processor through Stripe completely broke.

We had no idea for days that we were unable to accept orders.

Will never activate this plugin again.

Total loss of thousands of dollars.

Update 9/25/2024:

v1.1.4 restores USPS live rates to those who lost them with the upgrade. This is a MAJOR fix. You have to keep the old Shipping & Tax plugin active, and I'm sure they will try again at some point to make us pay for this functionality, but this update does eliminate the need to pay $109 for the USPS extension. I processed my refund this morning.

Address auto-validation is fixed. I have not yet had a chance to test this functionality, but this was one of the biggest usability headaches.

Based on fixes in the last three updates and the devs' responsiveness to making things right, I am upgrading my star rating to 3/5. If it weren't for the headache that this migration has been, I might say 4/5.

DEVS: Two issues remain! Fix these and you'll have 5 stars from me, for whatever that's worth:

• BOX PACKING ALGORITHM: Shipping & Tax showed our packers what size box to use. We need this functionality back.
• RE-PURCHASE LABELS FOR SAME ORDER: Again, this was an often-used feature of Shipping & Tax. It's been disruptive to lose it.

Update 9/19/2024:

Several major bugs have been fixed in the two releases since this initial review. An issue with label data stored in the order meta has been fixed. A bug affecting orders with virtual products has been fixed. You now have the option to modify or delete package templates, but these settings are still buried within the label purchasing dialog (instead of in the shipping settings, where they clearly belong).

The Woo team is trying to ease the pain of losing live rates at checkout by offering a free year of the USPS add-on. Honestly, I don't think the team realized how many of us had this functionality, or what it would mean for us to unexpectedly lose it. They claim it was a deprecated feature, but I had it, and I didn't start using Shipping & Tax until after they claim the feature was retired. . .

Update 9/11/2024:

The box packing algorithm has also been removed from this version. You are no longer told which pre-saved box is appropriate for the order.

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DO NOT upgrade from Shipping & Tax until you absolutely must. The Woo team needs time to make this right.

I'm utterly confused as to how this plugin made it to production. Shipping & Tax was a feature-rich, fully functional extension with nearly a million active installs. How did the Woo team come to the conclusion that this version was ready, or that it should be marketed as an "upgrade"?

TAKE NOTE: There is not a single new feature in the plugin that is not available in the latest version of Shipping & Tax, and many essential functions of the old version were removed without warning.

• USPS rate quotes in cart/checkout are gone. You have to pay $109/year to get them back.
• Usability is worse. The process of purchasing labels takes more clicks and more steps.
• Many small, but essential features are removed. Specifically, the box-packing alogrithm, re-purchasing new labels for an order, auto-validation of addresses.
• You are likely to encounter bugs. You will be forced to change your processes.

Shop owners who upgrade without this warning will be left scrambling to revert, or deal with it. Betrayal of trust. ONE STAR.

I'll upgrade my star rating when this plugin truly resembles an upgrade.

Wasted a lot of time thinking this was supposed to be a complete online shipping solution. The name "WooCommerce Shipping" is misleading. Maybe they should change the name of this plugin to "WooCommerce Shipping Labels." It's just for buying and printing shipping labels, that's all. It would also help if Woo would be more clear in their product info about what features are included, or not included, in their plugins. You can see from the other reviews that I'm not the only one who was fooled by this.

If you're looking for shipping methods to plug into WooCommerce, you need the USPS and/or DHL shipping method extensions. They may be worth the $109 you have to pay for a year of service for each of them... I'm willing to pay for a software license, but after the horrid nightmares I've had with Adobe, I have an extreme aversion to software subscriptions, so I've chosen another option.

WARNING SHOP OWNERS:
This removes all USPS shipping rates, and you will no longer be able to take orders if you use USPS.

The worst thing its that this is a surprise and will break your ability to take orders while you troubleshoot, due to the underhanded and secret removal of features from your website. I've been involved in software development and this is very underhanded.

After installing this "upgrade", you will start getting contacted by your customers with "there's no shipping options available, I can't check out!"

Woo used to include USPS shipping rates for free with their software, and many older website are grandfathered in, which is good and right. BUT If you install this update, they will remove your free USPS shipping rates without telling you, and you will be forced to pay a subscription to an additional replacement plugin.

If you are one of these grandfathered in websites you are probably using a plugin called "WooCommerce Shipping & Tax" which is currently at v. 2.8.1 and is the free plugin which gives you USPS shipping options. On that plugin page it says: "Attention: Shipping features have moved to a new dedicated plugin." That means If you install this plugin, that plugin will no longer work and you will have to start paying for USPS shipping method and rate calculations.

This plugin is Woo's ploy to scoop up all of the older website enjoying free USPS rates and force them to pay for the service that has been free for years.

You should restore the previous version while this new one is still being refined since it was not ready for prime time. You should have left the old one in place and treat this as a and different plugin because that is what it really is. And it is horribly implemented I can't believe it was based on research and user experience as claimed. A lot of functionality lost and really no new features except that there is now a need to make several more clicks to accomplish some of the old functionality that is still left.

The ability to create a new shipping label is gone. Once you create a shipping label, there does not appear to be an option to create a new one for the same order. The button changes to "View purchased shipping labels". Please restore functionality to create additional shipping labels for an order.

Auto address verification is gone. Now everything has to be verified manually, resulting in additional clicks. The option to verify with Google Maps is also gone.

The migration of settings did not work. Lost all custom package sizes and have to redo everything now. Very bad experience.

Even though I have checked the following options, the new plugin just seems to ignore all of them.
"Remember service selection" and "Remember package selection"

There is no option to edit custom packages or create new ones except while creating a new shipping label. And remember, once you create a shipping label, the feature to add custom packages is no longer accessible unless it is is hidden somewhere I am struggling finding.

How can one rollback to the previous version??

The WooCommerce Shipping & Tax plugin no longer works if this is activated. This plugin doesn't provide any USPS shipping methods or rates for customers to use at checkout.

Shipping methods are simply inadequate and worse that previous plugin. Don't use this. I don't want flat rate shipping method, but that's the only option.

The developers have been quick and concise in helping me understand the plugin's capabilities and limitations. All in all, I am very happy with this plugin so far. The cost savings on DHL shipping is significant.

My only complaint is that there is no way to use DDP service (delivery duty paid) which means we can't use it for shipping to private consumers in EU countries. But as DDP requires a "bill back" from DHL after they pay the duty/vat, I understand how this would get complicated. But I remain hopeful; if anyone can figure it out, I have confidence in these developers.