Every merchant who ships internationally eventually discovers a region they didn't realize was switched off, usually from a customer who asked. This article is about closing that gap yourself, before a shopper does it for you: how to check exactly which regions are enabled, using the same data Arbyn reads, and what a shopper is actually told when they ask about a region that isn't.

"Enabled" and "disabled" here means whether a specific state, province, or territory is part of one of your shipping zones. A region can be enabled for one country while a neighbouring region in the same country is disabled, most often because a carrier genuinely can't reach it, or because you chose not to ship there for cost or logistics reasons. Arbyn reads this at the exact same level of detail you configured it, region by region, and answers a shopper accordingly.

Open Knowledge, then Catalog, then Shipping, choose the profile you want to check, and select View zones & rates. Any country whose coverage is limited to specific regions shows a count next to it, for example "74 regions only". Select it to expand the full list of exactly which regions are enabled.

To actually change which regions are enabled, that happens in Shopify itself, under Settings, then Shipping and delivery. This page is read-only; it shows you your real settings, it doesn't edit them.

Checking is a two-step read: is the country limited at all, and if so, is the specific region on the list. A country showing no region breakdown is enabled everywhere inside it, nothing further to check. A country showing a region count is where the real checking happens: expand it, and you'll see the complete list of what's switched on. Anything not on that list is switched off, even if it's a well-known or populous region.

A customer asking "do you ship to me" and a customer asking "do you ship to Region X" get answered differently, and that difference is intentional. If a shopper names a specific region, Arbyn checks it against your real region list directly and gives a definite yes or no. If a shopper only names the country, and your coverage there is limited to certain regions, Arbyn doesn't guess which region they might be in, it asks. That behaviour, and why it's built that way, is covered in its own article; this one is about auditing your own settings so you already know the answer before a shopper asks.

What a shopper hears about a disabled region is a plain, direct no, not a vague deflection. Arbyn is instructed to check the customer's named region against your real coverage and answer definitively either way. A region that's off doesn't get a hedge like "you might want to check with us." It gets told clearly that delivery isn't currently available there, the same confidence level as a positive answer for a region that is covered. That matters for trust: a shopper who gets a clear no can decide what to do next immediately, rather than being left in limbo.

Regions get disabled for real operational reasons, and reviewing them periodically is worth doing on purpose. A carrier dropping coverage to a remote province, a region added automatically when you installed a new fulfilment app and never reviewed, a temporary restriction that was meant to be short-term and never got revisited, all of these produce the exact same shape in your settings: a region quietly missing from the list. Because the audit shows you the complete list rather than just a count, it's a reasonable habit to open a country you sell heavily into every so often and confirm the regions you expect to see are actually there.

A whole location with zero shipping coverage is a different, more severe version of this same problem. This article is about a single region inside an otherwise-covered country. It's possible for an entire fulfilment location, everything held at it, to not be attached to any shipping profile at all, most often when a fulfilment app creates its own location automatically and it never gets added to a delivery profile. That shows up as its own separate warning on the same audit page, since it's a location-level gap rather than a region-level one, and it means nothing shipping from that location can reach checkout at all, not just a narrower set of regions.

How do I find out which regions are currently disabled for a country? Open Knowledge, then Catalog, then Shipping, pick your profile, choose View zones & rates, and expand the country. Any region not shown in that expanded list is currently disabled.

A shopper says Arbyn told them a region isn't covered, but I thought it was. What do I check? Open the same audit view and expand that specific country. If the region genuinely isn't in the list, your Shopify settings are what need updating, not Arbyn's answer, since Arbyn is reading your real configuration directly.

Does Arbyn tell a shopper why a region is disabled? No, it doesn't have a reason to give, only the fact of coverage or its absence. If shoppers frequently ask why, that's worth adding to your written shipping policy or a FAQ, which Arbyn can then draw on for the explanation itself.

If I re-enable a region in Shopify, how quickly will Arbyn know? Within a few hours through the background refresh at most, or immediately if the live lookup tool runs during a conversation happening right after your change.

Is there a way to see every disabled region across my whole store at once, rather than country by country? Not currently. The audit is organized by country because that's how Shopify's own zone structure is organized, so checking a specific country you're curious about is the fastest path today.