Shipping duties unpaid means the driver asks your customer for money they did not agree to pay. Some pay it resentfully, some refuse the parcel, and some write about it. DoorFree collects landed cost at checkout — without a Shopify Plus upgrade.
Early access — we are onboarding a first cohort and reply to every enquiry within one business day.
What one refused parcel costs
Illustrative, using typical courier brokerage pricing on a low-value parcel. The brokerage fee, not the duty, is usually what triggers the refusal.
The problem
When you ship duties unpaid, the carrier fronts the duty and tax, adds a brokerage or disbursement fee for doing so, and collects the total from the recipient. Your customer — who already paid you at checkout — is asked for more money by a stranger in a van.
The fee is often disproportionate to the order. A brokerage charge that would be rounding error on a pallet is a meaningful percentage of a $90 order. From the customer’s side it is indistinguishable from a bait-and-switch.
The outcomes are predictable: refused parcels that return at your cost, support tickets you cannot resolve because the charge is not yours, chargebacks, and reviews that mention hidden fees. The duty was never the expensive part.
In their own words
We did not invent this problem. These are the actual queries people type when they hit it.
Built for you if
If three or more of these are true, DoorFree will pay for itself. If none of them are, we will tell you so rather than sell you something.
How it works
The work happens whether or not you are watching. You get the output.
Installs on Basic and Shopify plans. No theme rebuild and no migration to Plus.
Duty, tax and the brokerage component are calculated from the HS code, origin and destination, and shown as a single line before the customer pays.
The claim and the prepayment are in place before the label is created, so the carrier bills you rather than knocking on your customer’s door.
If the carrier bills differently than quoted, the variance lands with you and is reported — not passed to the person who already paid.
What you get
A number the customer agrees to, instead of a line of small print warning them that fees may apply.
Built specifically for brands whose volume does not justify Plus pricing but whose customers still live in the United States.
The fee that causes most refusals is the one most calculators leave out. It is in ours.
Where your goods qualify for preferential treatment, the quote reflects it rather than charging the customer duty you should not be collecting.
Rules for low-value parcels have been moving. The quote follows current treatment instead of an assumption from two years ago.
Monthly summary of quoted versus billed, so you can tell whether your landed-cost pricing is holding.
Side by side
| Today | With DoorFree | |
|---|---|---|
| Who gets asked for money | Your customer, at the door | Nobody — it was paid at checkout |
| Brokerage fee | Charged to the customer, in full | Priced into the quote |
| Refused parcels | A regular occurrence | Rare |
| Reviews mentioning fees | Yes | No |
| Shopify plan required | — | Basic or Shopify. Not Plus. |
Send us your situation and we will tell you plainly whether DoorFree would make a difference at your volume — before you commit to anything.
Request detailsRequest details
Seven questions. We use them to work out whether DoorFree is actually the right fit for you — and to say so if it is not.
We are onboarding a first cohort of Canadian brands, so spots are limited and we would rather tell you early if you are not one of them.
FAQ
Guides
Written for the specific questions brands ask us. No gate, no email required.