Setting up postage and delivery

Postage lives under Manage shop → Operations, and each listing points at what you’ve set up there. Do it once and it applies across your shop.

Orders only go to England, Scotland and Wales for now, so price your postage for Great Britain. You won’t be posting to Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or abroad.

Postage methods

A postage method is a rate you reuse: the service you send with, how long it takes, and what it costs. Shoppers see the service and the delivery time on every listing that uses it, so they know how their parcel is coming.

Each one has a postage price and an each extra item price. When someone buys more than one thing from you in the same order, the highest postage among their items is charged once, and every further item adds its extra-item price. Three mugs don’t cost three lots of full postage.

Some things can’t share a box. For those, answer No to “Can extra items share this parcel?” and every item on that method pays its full postage, posted on its own.

You can have up to 20. Type the service the way you’d say it: Royal Mail Tracked 48, Evri, DPD, Parcelforce, or a local courier.

The estimated delivery is picked from a short list of ranges, or choose Other and enter your own days. It’s when a shopper can report a parcel as late, so pick for a slow week.

Free postage

Free postage is a choice on the listing, not a method priced at £0. Under Postage, choose Free postage, then pick the postage method you’ll send it with. Shoppers see that method’s service and delivery time, and pay nothing for it.

One method can carry free listings and paid ones. If a shopper buys a paid item and a free one from you together, they pay the paid item’s postage and nothing extra for the free one.

Every method still needs a price. If you only ever post free, enter what the postage really costs you: it’s what a shopper would pay on a listing that charges it.

Build it into the price if the maths works.

Free postage shows on your listing cards in search and browse, which paid postage doesn’t.

Delivery upgrades

Optional faster services a shopper can pay extra for at checkout. Each one belongs to a postage method: open the method under Postage methods, add the service, pick how long it takes, and set the price on top of that method’s postage. A coaster and a chair can then charge different amounts for the same service.

A listing offers the upgrades on the method it posts with. The listing page names each one with its price, and your listing form shows them under the method you pick.

When a shopper buys items on different methods together, they’re offered only the services every one of those methods has, matched by name, at the highest of their prices, once. So give the same service the same name on each method you offer it on.

Up to 5 on each method, and only offer what you’ll actually get to the post office in time for.

One thing to know: if a shopper changes their mind and returns the order, you refund the standard postage, not the upgrade they chose. That’s the law rather than our rule.

Posting times

Each listing carries a Posts within (days) figure, and a listing can’t go live without one. It’s a promise, and three separate things read it:

1. The delivery estimate the shopper sees before buying.
2. When they become entitled to raise a "hasn’t been posted" issue.
3. Your on-time posting record, which feeds where your listings rank.

Set it for a bad week, not a good one. Being early is free.

Your return address

Under Manage shop → Operations → Return address. You need one before you can publish, because a return has to have somewhere to go.

It’s only shown to a shopper when a return is actually agreed, not on your public shop page.

Who pays return postage

The shopper pays on a change-of-mind return, and every listing tells them so before they buy. You pay when the item was faulty, damaged, wrong, or not as described, or when part of the order never arrived.

Setting your returns policy covers that properly, including sealed hygiene items.