How to Get Refunds for Late Deliveries

Carriers do not tell you when they miss a guaranteed delivery. The refund exists, but finding the late shipments and claiming it is your job.

Expedited services cost several times what ground costs, and the premium buys a contractual delivery commitment rather than just a faster truck.

Where the service carries a guarantee and the carrier misses it, you are entitled to a refund. The terms differ by carrier and by service, and carriers change them, so read your own service guide rather than taking the entitlement from here.

At any real volume of expedited shipping, the refunds you never claimed are a meaningful number.

The work is the audit. Here is the process, in three steps.

The screens below are ShipStation. On another platform the steps are the same and the buttons are elsewhere.

Step 1: Export the shipment data from ShipStation

Export one service level at a time. A file that mixes two-day and overnight shipments cannot be audited against a single guarantee, and a carrier will reject a claim built from one.

1. Open the Shipments tab.
2. In the left-hand menu, select Delivered.
3. Set filters to only display orders shipped using a specific carrier and service level. In ShipStation, select the “Carrier” dropdown and toggle the specific carrier you want to export data for. Then, under the “Other” dropdown, select the “Service”filter and toggle the service level you want to export orders from. Finally, select the date range you want to see.
4. Click “Export Shipments”. A pop-up appears.
5. Click “Create New Format”.
6. Move only the fields the audit needs across with the right arrow: shipped date, delivery date, tracking number, carrier and service.
7. Name the format and export. You get a CSV.
8. Repeat for every service level you ship with a guarantee.

That gives you the data.

Step 2: Audit the export for late deliveries

The audit is a spreadsheet formula comparing the ship date to the delivery date.

The examples below are Excel. Another spreadsheet will want slightly different syntax for the same comparison.

1. Open the export and check the fields came through.
2. The formula below checks a two-day shipment. For 3-day or overnight, change the number of days.
3. To compare the actual delivery date to the guaranteed delivery date use this function: =IF(B1-A1>2, “late”,""). Paste this function in an empty cell/column in the row you want to compare the delivery date for. If done properly, the cell will say “late”for every order not delivered in time. Make sure to substitute the actual cells you have data in. The value on the left hand side of the “-“ operator should be the shipping date cell. The value on the right-hand side of the operator should be the delivery date cell.
4. If your guaranteed delivery has a time window i.e.,“before 10am”, use this function to compare the delivery date and substitute the time for your guaranteed window. =IF(AND(B1-A1>2,TIME(HOUR(B1),MINUTE(B1),SECOND(B1))>TIME(8,0,0)), “late”,""). In this case, the function is checking to see if the delivery was made within two days and before 8am.
5. Weekends move the guaranteed window. Check the service guide and your carrier contract before counting a weekend shipment as late.
6. Check the exceptions too. Some guarantees do not apply to residential delivery on certain services.

Step 3: Submit the refund request

Every claim needs the tracking number, the guaranteed delivery time and the actual delivery time. UPS is the example below; the other carriers have equivalent forms.

1. Open the UPS claim form.
2. Log in to your business account.
3. Choose “Late Delivery” as the reason.
4. Add the shipment details and submit.

If a carrier disputes a claim you think is valid, the delivery scan data in the export is usually what settles it.