Shipium Carrier Return Label Service

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Overview

Many retail companies enable their customers to send back products due to issues with a product or as part of their business model. In order to support these returns, Shipium offers an API to get back a return label.

Most shipping carriers have a different return method that enables you, the shipper, to:

  • Not get charged for shipping the package until the label is scanned. (Some carriers do charge a fee per requested return label, however.)
  • Print a label with a tentative weight or no weight at all.
  • Specify your FC as the destination and a customer location as the origin.

The carrier return label API is very closely related to the carrier and method selection and carrier shipment label APIs, so you will find that many of the structures and components overlap with those.

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Authentication for API calls

In the cURL examples on this page, the environment variable AUTHSTRING is used to handle authorization. The recipe below shows how to set it correctly for both API Key and OAuth users.

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Authenticating for Curl
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Test mode

Want to run some examples and not charge any real money against your account?

You can add "testMode": true to the data passed to any label call to retrieve labels without charging money in a carrier-specific manner. Most carriers will mark their labels in a way to make clear that they are void, such as inserting "VOID" throughout the label or using a predefined ID.

Examples below all contain the testMode flag to err on the side of caution – remove it to make production calls.

Carrier Return Label requests

The request looks very similar to a carrier shipment label request. You pass information about the origin address and destination address, as shown below:

curl --request POST \
     --url <<api_url>>/api/v1/deliveryexperience/customerreturn/label
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header $AUTHSTRING \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data 'See Body JSON Below'

Request body contents

Note that in the following example, we include partnerReturnRequestId, customLabelEntries and orderItemQuantities. All these are optional and can be omitted.

(You can find more details about custom label entries here.)

{
    "currencyCode": "usd",
    "generateLabel": True,
    "labelParameters": {
        "testMode": True,
        "currencyCode": "usd",
        "labelFormats": [
            "zpl"
        ],
        "manifest": True,
        "includeLabelImagesInResponse": True,
        "customLabelEntries": {
            "order-number": "CUSTOM_ORDER_NUMBER"
        }
    },
    "destinationAddress": {
        "addressType": "commercial",
        "company": "Shipium Warehouse",
        "name": "Attn: RETURNS",
        "street1": "1234 Warehouse Way",
        "street2": "Suite 101",
        "city": "Reno",
        "state": "NV",
        "postalCode": "89521",
        "countryCode": "US"
    },
    "originAddress": {
        "addressType": "residential",
        "name": "Wile E. Coyote",
        "company": "ACME",
        "street1": "123 Warehouse St.",
        "street2": "Suite 42",
        "city": "Albuquerque",
        "state": "NM",
        "postalCode": "87121",
        "countryCode": "US"
    },
    "orderItemQuantities": [
        {
            "productId": "MM-01-001",
            "quantity": 1
        },
        {
            "productId": "GR-08-001",
            "quantity": 1,
            "productDetails": [
                "ormd"
            ]
        }
    ],
    "customerReturnParams": {
        "partnerReturnRequestId": "customReturnRequestId",
        "returnRequestDateTime": "2021-01-11T00:00:00+00:00",
        "contentDescription": "General Merchandise"
    }
}

Carrier Return Label response

The return label response is almost identical to the response returned by carrier shipment label, though with some differences as carrier costing does not occur for returns labels.

{
    "carrier": "ups",
    "carrierServiceName": "UPS Returns Service",
    "carrierShipmentId": "1Z204E380338943508",
    "carrierTrackingId": "1Z204E380338943508",
    "documents": [
        {
            "labelExpiration": "2020-11-19T21:11:42.628Z",
            "labelFormat": "ZPL",
            "labelImage": {
                "imageEncoding": "base64",
                "imageContents": "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"
            },
            "labelProperties": {
              "dpi": 203,
              "height": 6,
              "labelOrientation": "rotate_0",
              "linearUnits": "in",
              "width": 4
            },
            "labelUrl": "https://api.shipium.com/labels/1a486afc-2ffc-4c37-928f-8d6aa014b35b.zpl"
        }
    ],
    "params": {
        "partnerReturnRequestId": "customReturnRequestId",
        "returnRequestDateTime": "2021-01-11T00:00:00+00:00",
        "contentDescription": "General Merchandise"
    },
    "serviceMethodName": "UPS Returns Service",
    "shipiumCustomerReturnLabelId": "4c6af31c-6f1d-4b20-a16f-a9110135e442",
    "status": "success",
    "statusDetails": "string"
}

Retrieving previously created labels

You can retrieve previously created labels by calling the same endpoint, using the GET request type and passing the returnLabelId you previously received in your response body.

curl --request GET \
     --url  <<api_url>/api/v1/deliveryexperience/customerreturn/label/{returnLabelId}
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header $AUTHSTRING \
     --header 'content-type: application/json'

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More information on the API responses

As with all Shipium API responses, this API follows the API Response Codes standards unless otherwise specified.

Updated 27 days ago