Why Are My Shipping Estimates Not Displaying During Checkout?
Shipping cost calculation involves many factors. By default the built shipping methods for the supported shippers default to a "Real-time" calculation that involves a packing solution calculation to determine the package weight and dimensional (L x W, H) details along with the origination point (defined by the City, State, & Postal code details) and the delivery address (Street address, City, State and Postal code details) which are then transmitted to the shippers API, which then returns an estimate for each of the configured shipping methods from the shipper that deliver to the delivery address.
Please note: Since these real-time calculated shipping methods communicate with the shippers API in order to determine the valid shipping methods and their calculated shipping cost, there can be server timeouts and other similar "outages" that may occur from time to time.
How Can I Check On The Status Of The Shipping API server(s) for my shipper(s)?
The first thing to check is the status of the shippers servers. You can use this website to track the uptime and reported server issues here: https://www.shippingapimonitor.com/
If the server appears up based on viewing the https://www.shippingapimonitor.com/, then next step is to test the checkout in your troubleshooting mode by logging into your UltraCart account, then either:
Navigate to your website to initial a shopping cart checkout
ORUse the "View All Orders (In Any Stage)" tool to locate an order to use for troubleshooting by either viewing the packing solution or coning the order to the BEOE to view the shipping "packing solution" link which will appear just below the estimates (or location of the estimates would appear if none are displaying).
If you are still unsure of the issue or need to better fine tune your shipping configuration, please see the the following Troubleshooting Shipping 'help' document.
Things You can Proactively Do When The Shippers API is Down
If its the USPS API that is down, you can "Disable the U.S.P.S. Address Standardization" from the checkout process, by selecting that checkbox from the "Checkout Options" tab in the shipping configuration area.
You can change the shipping method cost calculation from real-time to one of the non real-time calculation options.