What we find · Specimen 07
Policy contradicts the cart: free shipping on the policy page, a shipping charge in the cart
Two pages on the same store disagree about what the shopper pays. The shipping policy says orders over a threshold ship free. The cart, over that threshold, adds a charge. The same shape appears with lead times, return windows and restocking fees.
Whichever page is right, the shopper has just been told the store does not know its own terms, on the screen where they were about to pay.
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Specimen 07 · Policy contradicts the cart
Shipping policyFree shipping on orders over $75.Cart · $164 orderShipping $12.50Two pages on the same store disagreeing about what the shopper pays.
The specimen is drawn — our own type, our own palette, an invented product, no screenshot and no store's interface reproduced. It shows what the defect class looks like, not what any storefront looked like.
What a shopper sees
They read the policy, or the announcement bar, or the line under the buy box, and they added a second item to get over the threshold. The cart charges shipping anyway. Now they have to decide whether the policy is wrong, the cart is wrong, or the store is the kind that says one thing and charges another. None of those ends in an order.
With made-to-order goods the version that hurts is the lead time: seven days on the product page, two weeks in the FAQ, and a third figure on the shipping page. A buyer spending three thousand dollars on something that does not exist yet reads the delivery estimate more carefully than any other sentence on the site. Three answers is worse than a slow answer.
Why it happens
On Shopify
The policy pages are prose that someone typed once. The shipping rates are rules in the admin, by zone, weight and price, with a free-shipping condition that was set before the threshold changed, or set on one zone and not another, or set on price before discount while the policy meant after. The announcement bar is a third, separate piece of text. Lead times are typed into the product template, the FAQ page and a shipping page by three different people in three different months.
On WooCommerce
Shipping zones and methods live in one settings screen, the free-shipping method has its own minimum and its own "apply before or after coupon" setting, and a shipping plugin or a table-rate extension can override both. The policy page is a normal page. A cart notice plugin writes "you are $X away from free shipping" from yet another threshold field. Every one of these is edited independently and none of them checks the others.
Check your own store in two minutes
- Write down every promise about money and time — Shipping threshold, return window, restocking fee, lead time, delivery window. From the policy pages, the announcement bar, the product page, the FAQ and the footer.
- Build a cart just over the threshold — Logged out, to your main shipping zone. Read the shipping line. Then try just under, and with a discount applied.
- Compare the lead times — For one product, collect every lead time the site states and put them side by side. Note whether each says business days or calendar days.
- Check the other zone — If you ship to more than one country, repeat the cart in the second one. Free shipping is usually configured for one.
What the fix involves
Pick one set of numbers and make one place the source of them. On Shopify, render the threshold and the lead time from a shop metafield into the policy page, the announcement bar and the product template, so a change in the admin changes all three. On WooCommerce, the same from a single option or from the shipping method's own setting. State whether days are business or calendar days. Then read the policy pages once a quarter against the settings screens.
Effort in the published audits: about two hours to reconcile three lead-time surfaces onto one source.
Where we found it
Audit No. 002, a powersports retailer on Shopify: the same made-to-order windshield was given three different lead times, on the product page, in the product FAQ and on the dedicated lead-times page, with business days and calendar days not distinguished and transit windows that differed by a factor of two. It is finding F4 there, rated high.
Not sure about yours?
Send the URL. We read the storefront from the outside, write down every finding with the page it came from, and send you the document. It is free, ungated, and yours to keep.