WooCommerce

Draft WooCommerce shipping policy copy for international orders

A scenario prompt for writing international shipping policy copy that sets duty, customs, and delivery-time expectations clearly enough to prevent disputes over who pays what.

Works with Claude / GPT610 uses 4.2

The prompt

woocommerce-international-shipping-policy
Write the international shipping section of a WooCommerce store's shipping policy:

STORE: [ships from a US warehouse], now shipping to [Canada, UK, and the EU]
DUTY MODEL: [DDU / delivered duty unpaid, meaning the customer is responsible for any
customs duties or import taxes charged on arrival, they are not included at checkout]
DELIVERY TIME: [Canada 6-10 business days, UK and EU 10-16 business days]
RESTRICTIONS: [items containing lithium batteries cannot currently ship
internationally due to carrier restrictions]

Write the policy covering:

1. A plain statement of the duty model up front: the customer's checkout total does not
   include customs duties or import taxes, and those may be charged separately by the
   carrier or local customs on delivery. State this before the delivery time estimate,
   not after, since an unexpected customs bill on arrival is the single most common
   complaint in international ecommerce and needs to be visible before checkout, not
   discovered afterward.
2. Delivery time ranges by region stated as business days with a note that customs
   clearance can add unpredictable delay beyond the carrier's estimate, so the range
   given is a shipping estimate, not a guarantee.
3. The lithium battery restriction stated specifically enough that a customer trying to
   order an affected product internationally understands why it's blocked, rather than
   just seeing a generic "this item can't be shipped to your country" at checkout with
   no explanation.
4. A short note on returns from international addresses: since return shipping cost
   from overseas can be disproportionate to the item's value, state whether the store
   covers it, requires the customer to cover it, or offers a partial refund without
   requiring the item back for lower-value returns, so this doesn't get negotiated
   case by case in support.

Replace the bracketed regions, duty model, and restrictions with your own store's actual
shipping setup.

Stating the duty model before the delivery estimate, rather than after, matters more than it seems: a customer who sees “you may owe customs duties” only after already deciding they’re happy with the delivery time is far less likely to feel misled than one who reads it as an afterthought at the bottom of the page.