I tested it with weights for the same package size and the rates went up above 30 lbs. This is for a 12x6x6 package, so it would be hard to get above 30 lbs. in that package, but it does show there's a limit in weight to the Simple Rates.
We are a steel company and ship out a couple hundred items per week, all under 50 lbs but using SImple Rate. We can get over 30 lbs in a 12 x 6 x 6 box (crazy I know), but the rate jumps up to the "Large" Simple Rate when you enter 30 vs 31 lbs. My understanding on the UPS website is that weight doesn't matter as long as it's under 50 lbs, but isn't the case in SS. The UPS Simple Rate guidelines doesn't mention weight being a factor either, as long as under 50 lbs.
UPS Simple Rates says up to 50 lbs. on their website and there's no place to enter a weight when creating a shipment. The labels I print from ShipStation do show the weight so you may want to contact your account manager at UPS and ask if you can enter a lower number for the weight since it doesn't affect the rate. If so, then you can enter the lower weight number as a workaround.
Last week we had our UPS rep initiate a second account for us to utilize the Simple Rate as Mark had mentioned. Everything seemed to be going through, and just got this response from our UPS rep:
I have bad news. UPS has removed the ability to add Simple Rate pricing agreements, this was a recent change announced on September 29th.
The reason we can no longer add these agreements to an account is because UPS is looking to make Simple Rate a service level on the next Worldship upgrade in 2021. So for now, the service offering will only be available on UPS.com.
I am so sorry I did not find this out sooner. I know that you were looking to have this service level on ShipStation, so Iรขm going to see if our tech team has a solution that does not involve a new account/agreement. But I canรขt guarantee that they will have a solution.
I talked to my account rep about this last night. UPS was up in the air about keeping simple rate in the first place. They have written it into their API for third parties like shipstation and waiting for them to role out the update in the coming days. World ship will also be getting it in 2021 in Q2. I did send shipstation an email this morning seeing if they had any dates.
That makes sense. We now have 3 UPS accounts, one for domestic, one for domestic Simple Rate, and one for international. It's a massive pain, whenever I'm creating rules on the Shopify side, I have to do everything 3x over. We have a great rep, but that changes last year, the current rep missed our renewal, so we got to pay rack-rate for 3 months (still waiting on that refund), and the only quick-fix was to spin up another account.
If Shipstation could compare the rates and pick the cheapest, having 3 accounts might not be so bad, but that's not an option, so I've created rules for the typical scenarios, but the edge cases all need human intervention.
A poke for me as well. Our UPS rep sold us on Simple Rate, sees perfect for us, until we saw we can't use it with ShipStation, which puts us at a quandary