A rate shop picks the cheapest service that returns a rate at that moment. If the carrier that is normally cheapest has a short outage or error, it returns no rate and drops out, so the rate shop picks the next-cheapest service instead. The unexpected label was correct for the moment the rate was requested.

Why this happens

A rate shop compares only the services that successfully return a rate and picks the cheapest one. If the normally-cheapest carrier has a short outage or returns an error when the rate is requested, it produces no rate and is left out of the comparison, so the next-cheapest enabled service wins.

How to check what happened

  1. Open the rate-shop results for the order and see which services returned a rate and at what price.
  2. Check whether the normally-cheapest carrier had an outage or error at that time (for example a known carrier problem that day).
  3. Confirm the unexpected service is enabled in the rate shop. It was picked because it was the next cheapest that returned a rate.
  4. Re-rate once the normally-cheapest carrier is available again to confirm it wins as expected.

How to control which service is picked

If a specific carrier should never be picked automatically, remove it from the rate shop, or add a business rule that excludes it.

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