A customer sees free delivery beside your product on Google, then reaches checkout and finds a charge. Or Google shows an old delivery price even though your shop has changed its rates. Editing the delivery page on your website may leave the information supplying Google untouched.
The useful starting point is one product, one destination and one delivery service. Follow that combination through your shop, Merchant Center and the integration between them. Fix the source supplying the wrong rate, then check that the correction survives the next update.
Google’s shipping specification requires delivery costs for Shopping ads and free listings targeting the United Kingdom. This guide covers online delivery charges.
Reproduce one exact mismatch
Record the product’s Merchant Center item ID, variant, submitted page URL and the time of your check. Save the Google result or issue message showing the unexpected charge.
Open the submitted product URL in a fresh browser session. Add that variant to the basket and enter a delivery address you are authorised to use. Stop before payment. Record:
- The delivery postcode and selected country.
- The basket contents, quantities and subtotal.
- The delivery service selected and its charge.
- Any discount, customer membership or delivery condition affecting the price.
Compare equivalent services: an express checkout option is a different offer from standard delivery. Use a signed-out session to establish the ordinary customer rate before investigating member benefits.
If the product price itself changes, use our separate guide to Merchant Center price and availability mismatches. Keeping the product price and delivery charge separate makes the repair easier to scope.
Find which source supplies the delivery rate
Start with the account policy
In Merchant Center, open Shipping and returns and inspect the relevant delivery policy. Menu wording can vary with language and interface updates. Confirm the destination, currency, applicable products and charging rule.
Google’s account shipping settings guide describes flat rates, order-value thresholds, weight-based rates and other supported calculations. It also explains that, where multiple applicable options exist, Google uses the lowest delivery cost and its associated speed; equal prices favour the faster option.
A forgotten free-delivery policy is therefore worth investigating alongside the paid service you expected Google to use. Check its eligibility before removing it: it may still represent a valid offer for another product group.
Inspect the affected product’s override
Open the product details and inspect its processed shipping information and supplying data source. Check the actual values Google received, as well as the settings your team intended to export.
A price submitted inside the product-level shipping attribute overrides account shipping service settings for that product. Google documents this in its shipping attribute reference. An old zero-price override can therefore explain why changing the account’s paid rate had no effect.
Ask whoever maintains the feed to trace that value to its origin. It might be an integration setting, a mapped product field or a feed rule. Preserve genuine exceptions for bulky or fragile goods while correcting the unwanted override.
Check whether your shop integration owns the setting
If a correction disappears after an update, investigate the connection supplying Merchant Center. Google warns that automated API updates, including third-party platform updates, can overwrite manual changes.
For Shopify, the Google & YouTube channel documentation says automatic import supports rates in the General shipping profile. Custom shipping profiles can sync incorrectly. It also explains that store shipping changes are reimported automatically when that route is used.
Check which mode the channel uses. If your delivery setup cannot be represented by the automatic import, Shopify documents a manual Merchant Center option. Change the channel’s shipping configuration to manual before maintaining rates there, and assign someone to keep those rates aligned with the shop.
For another platform or feed provider, check its documented ownership and synchronisation behaviour. Establish which system will supply the next update before making further edits.
Match the UK destination and the complete charge
A successful test for one address does not establish that every supported destination is correct. Choose examples from your actual delivery rules: a standard-rate postcode, a surcharge area and an excluded area, where applicable.
Merchant Center supports postcode-based delivery costs for the UK. For the product-level postal_code sub-attribute, Google specifies the outward code: for example, N1C from N1C 4AG. Follow the shipping attribute reference when configuring those product-level areas; do not assume a full postcode belongs in that field.
Check the total compulsory charge too. Google’s checkout requirements say applicable handling, service and carrier-related fees must be included in the submitted shipping cost. A small-basket surcharge also needs to be represented.
Keep your website’s delivery information, basket calculation and Google configuration consistent. If an area is excluded, verify that the customer journey reflects that exclusion. A convenient nationwide flat rate should not imply a service your business cannot provide.
Represent conditional free delivery accurately
Consider an illustrative offer: standard delivery costs £4.95, becoming free at a £60 basket value. A product priced below that threshold should not acquire an unconditional zero delivery charge simply because larger orders qualify.
Use an account-level order-value rule when that fits your setup. If your feed uses free_shipping_threshold, check its specific restrictions. Google’s free shipping threshold specification says it applies to all shipping attributes for the offer in that country and requires a single service level when using the service sub-attribute. Combining standard and express services needs particular care.
Test baskets just below, exactly at and just above your advertised threshold. Include a discounted basket if promotions change eligibility. Record which calculation your shop actually uses so the feed maintainer can reproduce it. These are recommended boundary checks, not example prices or thresholds you should copy into your business.
Check website markup and saved Search settings
Delivery information can also exist in machine-readable website markup and saved Google settings. Ask your developer to inspect what the live page outputs, including anything generated by an ecommerce or SEO plugin.
Google’s shipping policy documentation supports organisation-level ShippingService information and product-specific OfferShippingDetails. Its precedence guidance places Merchant Center or Search Console settings above website shipping markup, and product-level markup above organisation-level markup.
Consequently, correcting a plugin’s markup may leave a stronger saved setting in control. Check both. Have your developer update the existing implementation and remove conflicting output where necessary, rather than adding another independent copy of the delivery rules.
Valid markup is also not a promise that Google will display a particular delivery annotation. Separate the accuracy of the supplied information from the appearance of an individual search result.
Verify the repair before requesting a review
Google’s inaccurate shipping costs guidance identifies the policy problem where Merchant Center rates are lower than checkout charges. It recommends matching the costs, or slightly overestimating when an exact match is not possible. Exact, maintainable rates are the better operational target; avoid inflating them simply to conceal a broken integration.
After correcting the responsible source, submit or synchronise the updated data through your existing connection. Then repeat the original product, basket and destination checks. Our recommended acceptance checks are:
- The processed product and applicable delivery policy describe the intended charge.
- Checkout shows the corresponding rate and service for the test destination.
- Thresholds, exceptions and excluded areas behave as intended.
- The next routine feed or platform update leaves the correction intact.
If a warning or disapproval remains, follow the issue’s available review route. Google’s current review guidance distinguishes fixing an issue from disagreeing with a decision and explains that verification requirements can affect review availability. Read the issue details and any deadline before submitting. Saving a delivery policy does not itself confirm that a restriction has been lifted.
Give your team a repair they can maintain
Keep a short handover identifying the affected products, the source responsible for delivery rates, the test destinations and who updates the setup when prices or promotions change. Include the next synchronisation check.
That gives your shop manager, developer and advertising team a shared explanation of what changed and how to recognise a recurrence.
If Google and your checkout still disagree, talk to BuzzBoost about your product feed and ecommerce setup. Bring one affected product URL, its item ID and the destination used in your test so we can start with a reproducible example.
Featured image: AI-generated editorial artwork, not a photograph of a real BuzzBoost office, client or result.
