---
title: How to Temporarily Disable Live Shipping Rates
description: When it comes to doing business, theres no time for anything or anyone that can slow you down certainly not a shipping carrier.
---
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# How to Temporarily Disable Live Shipping Rates
When it comes to doing business, there's no time for anything or anyone that can slow you down certainly not a shipping carrier. If your products aren't getting to customers, that's big trouble.
Just like your own business, third-party shipping carriers need to conduct routine maintenance or may have issues from time to time. But this can slow down your stores checkout page.
You don't want to win a customer only to lose them as they're about to cross the finish line! So to keep sales and shipping options running smoothly when a carrier goes down, you'll want to disable any live rates associated with the relevant shipping carriers. Temporarily, you can enable replacement flat rates until the carrier is back online. Here's how:
1. Go to **Settings** \> **Shipping**.
2. In the **Live Rates** table, deselect check boxes in the **Active** column to disable live rates for a particular carrier. For example, if you're seeing inaccuracy or slowness related to USPS rates, deselect USPS methods only. You'll know you've disabled a method when it appears dimmed in the **Live Rates** table.
3. Click **Save**.
Disabling live rate shipping methods for a specific carrier will help eliminate any related slowness at checkout. You can still make these methods available to shoppers, but you'll need to recreate them as flat rate methods and assign your own pricing.
1. Go to **Settings** \> **Shipping**.
2. Click **Add Rate** next to the **Flat Rates** heading.
3. In the **Label** field, enter the name of one of your disabled live rates.
4. In the **Rate** fields, enter the cost you want to charge for this shipping method (**Base**), and an additional **Cost Per Lb** if desired.
5. To avoid undercharging shoppers for this shipping method, you may also wish to apply cost, weight, or location restrictions in the **Qualifying Locations** and **Qualifying Orders** sections.
6. Select **Active** to enable the shipping method.
7. Click **Save**.
Repeat the above steps for any additional flat rate methods you create as live rate replacements.
Once the third-party shipping carrier is back online, you can go to **Settings** \> **Shipping** to deselect your replacement flat rates and make them inactive. Be sure to enable your original live rate shipping methods in the **Live Rates** table, and click **Save**.
**Summary**
Navigating unexpected roadblocks is part of the challenge and thrill of running your own business. Switching from live shipping rates to flat rates in a jiff, if a shipping carrier goes offline, should appear seamless to your customers and shouldn't slow down sales or shipments at all.
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