How does the preferred carrier work for customer labels?

Short answer: labels your customers create from the Resale App use your preferred carrier whenever it returns a rate for the package. If it returns none, we use the cheapest rate from another Trendful carrier so the item still ships.

Setting your preferred carrier

In your admin account, go to Settings, then Preferences, and pick a carrier under Preferred carrier in the shipping section.

• Companies based in the United States can choose USPS, UPS, or FedEx.
• Companies based in Canada can choose Canada Post or FedEx.

How the label is chosen

When a customer creates a label from their Resale App account:

1. We ask the Trendful carriers for rates, based on the customer's address, your default receiving location, and the package size the customer selected.
2. If your preferred carrier returns a rate, we buy its cheapest one.
3. If your preferred carrier returns no rate, we buy the cheapest rate from the other Trendful carriers.

Customers can't choose the carrier or the service level themselves. If you haven't set a preferred carrier, we always buy the cheapest rate available.

When your preferred carrier isn't used

• The carrier doesn't serve the route or the package. Some carriers don't cover every address or package size.
• The carrier returns an error. If the carrier's system is having issues when we ask for rates, it returns no rate and we use one of the other carriers for that label.
• The customer ships from another country. Available carriers depend on the country the customer ships from. A customer in the United States sending to a store in Canada is offered US carriers, so Canada Post isn't an option for that label.

If no carrier can quote the shipment at all, or buying the label fails, the customer sees an error and can try again a little later. We don't switch carriers after a label purchase fails.

When we fall back to another carrier, the cheapest rate it offers for that route may be a faster service, such as overnight, and cost more than your preferred carrier usually does.

Checking which carrier was used

Go to Settings, then Shipping. Click any shipment to see the carrier, service, rate, items in the package, and tracking history. You can also search your shipments by tracking number.

If you want labels to always go through your own carrier account, contact us about a custom shipping integration.