Shipping restrictions by destination

Deciding where you ship is a business decision with legal parts. Once you have decided, the harder part is making every part of your store agree: the shipping policy, what checkout accepts, and what your fulfillment team actually sends. A destination you exclude in the policy but accept at checkout is a gap that undermines the policy.

This guide covers how to decide, how to write it down, and how to enforce it. It does not say which destinations are permitted for any product. That depends on your products, your buyers and the law, and needs advice from a qualified lawyer.

Deciding where you ship

Work through these questions for each country or region you are considering:

• Do you have business or research buyers there, and can you support them with documents, customer service and returns?
• Will your carriers accept your products to that destination? Carriers set their own rules, so check with each one.
• Are there import, customs or permit requirements, and can you and your buyers meet them? A lawyer or customs broker can advise.
• Do export rules apply? The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) explains that whether a license is required can depend on the item's classification, its destination, the end user and the end use.
• Within the US, are there address types you will not ship to, such as residential addresses or freight forwarders?

Write the result as a list of destinations you serve, rather than only a list of exclusions. A list of what you accept is easier to enforce at checkout and easier to explain to a buyer.

Screening the buyer, not just the country

Destination is only one part of the export picture. The International Trade Administration publishes a Consolidated Screening List that combines restricted party lists from the Departments of Commerce, State and the Treasury. It advises that a potential match calls for additional due diligence before proceeding. Whether you need to screen, and what to do with a match, is a question for a qualified lawyer. How to verify business and research buyers covers buyer checks more broadly.

Writing the policy

Your shipping policy should let a buyer know, before ordering, whether you can ship to them. Include:

• the countries and regions you ship to
• the address types you accept, such as business or institutional addresses
• what happens if an order has a destination you do not serve, for example that it is canceled before payment is captured and the buyer is told
• shipping times you can support
• who is responsible for customs paperwork, duties and import requirements

Be careful with delivery promises. The FTC's business guide to its Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule says sellers need a reasonable basis for any shipment time they state, and that if no time is stated, they must have a reasonable basis to believe they can ship within 30 days, with a different period for some credit-based orders. If you cannot ship on time, the guide says the buyer must be offered a choice between agreeing to the delay and canceling for a refund. Ask a lawyer how the rule applies to your sales.

The shipping policy checklist for research suppliers covers the rest of the policy, including carriers and lost parcels.

Tell buyers before checkout

Do not let the first sign of a restriction be an error at the payment step. Link the shipping policy from product pages, the cart and the footer, and answer the most common question, where you ship, in your FAQ. A buyer outside your destinations should be able to find that out in a few seconds, without creating an account or entering card details.

Enforcing it at checkout

• Limit the country selector to the destinations you serve.
• Check the ship-to address against your list, not only the billing address.
• Check the address type if your policy excludes residential addresses or forwarders.
• Stop or hold orders that do not match, with a clear message that says why.
• Apply the same check when a buyer asks to change the address after checkout.
• If staff can override a block, require a recorded reason.

Stripe's guidance on manual reviews suggests giving reviewers links to the shipping address, so they can see whether it might be a drop-shipping or freight-forwarding service. The same step helps when you check address types.

Keeping fulfillment aligned

• Give the packing team the same destination list as checkout, from the same source.
• Print shipping labels only from the verified order address.
• Do not reship to a new address on request without running the same checks again.
• Review carrier restrictions when you add a product or change carrier.
• Record which destination list was in force on each date, so you can show what applied to any order.

When an order conflicts with the policy

Hold or cancel it, do not ship it, and record what happened. Tell the buyer plainly that you do not ship to that destination. Do not suggest a different address, a forwarding service or another person's details as a way around your restrictions. If a processor or carrier will not support shipments to a destination, accept that and update your list.

Reviewing your list over time

Review the destination list when you add products, change carriers, or receive advice that changes your position. Date each version of the policy and keep the old ones; versioning your policies and checkout statements explains how. Claddr checks the ship-to address against your compliance profile at checkout and stores the result against the order, but the decision about where you ship, and the advice behind it, stays with you.