Fallback Rates

Sometimes the carrier service APIs can go down. You can check their current status and history here.

Flat rates and USPS rates come directly from Decimal's servers. So these should never be down. However, if you're using carriers other than USPS, it can be a huge issue if the carrier servers are down and Shopify simply displays "Sorry, there are no shipping rates available". Luckily, Decimal lets you have a special kind of rate that comes into play only for such scenarios. However, keep in mind that Fallback rates can have a "zone" but not a "condition":

"Fallback": {
    "enabled": true,
    "services": [
        {
            "code": "OVERNIGHT_SHIPPING",
            "total_price": 3500,
            "display_text": "Express Shipping",
            "zone": {
                "state": ["CA", "WA", "OR", "NV"]
            }
        },
        {
            "code": "TWO_DAY_SHIPPING",
            "total_price": 1500,
            "display_text": "2nd Day Shipping"
        },
        {
            "code": "Ground_SHIPPING",
            "total_price": 500,
            "display_text": "Ground Shipping"
        }
    ]
}

In this way, you won't lose potential sales due to a server outage at the carriers!

Note that if you have USPS rates enabled, the likelihood of needing Fallback rates is extremely small, as Decimal's USPS rates will rarely go down, if ever. Nevertheless, we still recommend that everyone should setup some kind of fallback rates for maximum reliability, even if you have USPS rates enabled.