How to prevent customers from being charged for shipping insurance alone

When customers remove all products from their subscription but leave shipping insurance, they can be charged for insurance with nothing to ship. This guide walks you through cleaning up existing cases and setting up automation to prevent it from happening again.

Why this happens & how to resolve

Shipping insurance is typically added as a recurring subscription item so it renews with each order. If a customer removes all their products but doesn't manually remove the insurance, it stays on the subscription. The next billing cycle charges them for shipping insurance alone, which leads to confusion, refund requests, and unnecessary support volume.

To fully resolve this, you'll need to complete two steps:

• Reactive cleanup: Cancel existing subscriptions that already have only shipping insurance remaining

• Proactive prevention: Set up an automated journey to catch future cases before they result in charges

We recommend completing the cleanup first, then setting up the journey.

Reactive cleanup: fix existing subscriptions

First, address subscriptions that already have only shipping insurance remaining. This prevents incorrect charges from going out before your automation is in place.

Choose one of the following approaches based on the number of affected subscriptions.

For a small number of subscriptions:

1. Export your subscriptions from Skio.

2. Filter for subscriptions that only contain your shipping insurance product.

3. Manually cancel these subscriptions or reach out to customers individually.

For a large number of subscriptions (recommended):

Bulk cancellation is an internal-only operation and is not available to merchants directly. You must contact Skio support via help@skio.com to perform bulk cancellations.

1. Contact Skio Support and let them know you need a bulk cleanup of insurance-only subscriptions.

2. Our team will identify all affected subscriptions and share the list with you for review.

3. Once you approve, we'll perform the bulk cancellation on your behalf.

4. We'll configure whether customers receive cancellation notifications. We typically recommend disabling these to avoid confusion.

Proactive prevention: set up an automated Journey

Once existing cases are cleaned up, create a journey that triggers whenever a customer removes all products but leaves shipping insurance on their subscription.

1. In the left-hand menu of your Skio Dashboard, go to Features > Journeys.

2. Click Create journey.

3. Choose the After product is added trigger. Despite its name, this trigger also fires when products are removed or quantities change.

4. Toggle on the One-time upsells, quantity changes setting. This ensures the journey triggers when customers remove products.

5. Add two conditions to identify when only shipping insurance remains:

   1. Condition 1: Subscription contains your shipping insurance product

   2. Condition 2: Subscription excludes all your other products (list every product except shipping insurance)

6. Add a Send notification to customer action. Use a message like:

We noticed you only have shipping insurance remaining in your subscription. 
Since shipping insurance protects product shipments, you may want to add products back or cancel your subscription to avoid future charges. 
If you have questions, please contact our support team.

This condition combination ensures the journey only fires when a customer has shipping insurance and nothing else in their subscription.

Alternative: use your email platform instead

If you'd rather handle notifications through your email marketing platform (like Klaviyo) instead of Skio Journeys:

1. Create a flow triggered by Subscription Changed or Upcoming Billing Reminder.

2. Add a conditional split to check if only shipping insurance remains.

3. Send a notification to the customer or your support team.

If you notify your support team instead of the customer, they can manually cancel the subscription before the next billing date.

Why Journeys can't auto-cancel subscriptions

You may wonder why the journey sends a notification instead of automatically cancelling. Removing the last product from a subscription is functionally equivalent to cancellation, which is a significant action that requires explicit customer intent. Skio Journeys are intentionally restricted from performing automatic cancellations to prevent accidental subscription loss.

Notification-based approaches, whether sent to customers or your support team, are the recommended solution.

Advanced options

Custom API integration

If you have development resources, you can build a custom integration using Skio's API:

1. Listen for subscription update webhooks.

2. Check if only shipping insurance remains.

3. Call the cancellation API automatically.

This provides fully automated handling but requires custom development work.

Shipping insurance app solutions

Some shipping insurance providers offer their own handling for this scenario. Check with your provider to see if they support built-in logic to remove insurance when all products are removed, integration with subscription platforms, or custom workflows for your specific setup.

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