Your store's shipping rates are set up in zones — one price for domestic orders, a different one for a remote region, and so on. When a customer edits their delivery address, sometimes the new address falls into a different zone than the one the order was originally charged shipping for. This article explains exactly what happens then, and the one setting that controls it.
The setting
Find it on the address tool's settings page: "When an address change moves the order into a different shipping zone." There are two choices today.
Don't allow the change — ask the customer to contact us (the default)
If the new address would move the order into a zone with a different shipping cost, the customer can't save it themselves. They see a plain message and are told to reply to their order confirmation email so you can help directly. Nothing about the order changes.
Keep the original shipping fee
The address saves normally, and the order keeps whatever shipping cost the customer already paid — nothing is charged or refunded for the shipping change. Because this can mean you collect less (or occasionally more) than the real cost of shipping to the new address, every case is recorded so you can review it:
A note appears on the order itself, naming both amounts — for example, "Shipping address changed to a different zone. Shipping fee kept at $15.00 per store settings — the zone's own rate is $100.00."
A marker appears on your orders list.
A ledger entry records the change.
If the new zone doesn't even offer the customer's original shipping method by the same name — for example, they originally paid for Express, and the new zone only has Standard — the note goes further and names that too, because a method swap is a bigger fact than just a price difference.
Recharge or refund the difference — coming soon
A third option exists on the settings page but isn't selectable yet, with a note explaining why: it needs a step where the customer reviews and pays (or is refunded) the exact difference before the change saves, and that review step isn't built. Don't tell a customer this option is available today.
When neither option applies — Tacey always asks the customer to contact you
Regardless of which of the two options above you've chosen, there's a standing exception: if Tacey can't confidently price the new zone's shipping, the customer is always asked to contact you. This happens when:
The new address uses a live carrier-calculated rate (the price isn't known until the carrier is asked).
The rate has its own conditions, like a minimum order size for free shipping.
The new address isn't covered by any of your shipping zones at all.
This shows up more often on international shipping than on domestic, simply because international rates are more likely to be carrier-calculated or conditional. It's the same principle behind every other address-edit refusal in this tool: Tacey refuses loudly rather than guessing with a shipping cost it can't actually confirm.
What this never does
It never charges or refunds shipping on its own. Neither of the two available options moves any money — "Keep the original shipping fee" is exactly that, kept, not adjusted.
It never applies across a currency change. If the new zone would price the order in a different currency than the order was placed in, the change is refused, regardless of which option you've chosen.
It never fires on a change that doesn't cross a zone. A street, apartment, or spelling correction within the same zone never triggers any of this — this whole mechanism only exists for the specific case of an address edit crossing into a genuinely different shipping zone with a genuinely different price.
Frequently asked
A customer's address edit was refused, and it looked like an ordinary correction. Why?
Check whether the new address falls into a different shipping zone than the original. If it does, and your setting is "Don't allow the change," that's the expected behavior — the address itself might be perfectly fine, but the shipping-cost change needs your review.
If I choose "Keep the original shipping fee," will I always undercharge?
Not necessarily — it depends on which direction the price moved. The note on the order always names both the kept amount and the new zone's actual rate, so you can see exactly what happened on every order this affects.
Does this apply to free-shipping orders too?
Yes. If an order qualified for free shipping and the new zone doesn't offer an equivalent free-shipping threshold, the comparison is against the $0.00 the order actually paid — so the note may show what looks like a large increase. That's the zone's real rate being compared to what was actually charged, not a miscalculation.
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