Complex Delivery Issue

[abbi_newbie]

This may be something that we are doing a bit backward - but our delivery charges and services are fairly complex.

What I really need are different bands for different services so for example:

items under 2kg can go 2nd class post, first class post or courier

Items between 2kg and 29kg can go courier or special next day courier

Items over 30kg - special big & heavy courier
or special big &heavy courier next day

We then have anomolies like certain items that have to be on a 2 man delivery service or delivered by pallet services and I was thinking of setting these products to '2000kg' and '3000kg' so tehy are way out of the normal weight limits.

However, when I have come to do this it seem you can only specify 'up to' a certain weight rather than between?
Which means if something is 10kg it still shows the royal mail 2nd class option...

Does anyone have a solution? I looked at categories, but it seems you can't remove certain categories in certain areas (which we need to do as we cannot deliver the big stuff to all areas)

Help! I may have missed something obvious but this is boggling my brain!

The only solution I have come up with is to reverse everything so light stuff is 2000kg and heavy stuff is under 2kg.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Abbi,

I think you're on the right track.

Yes, an item at 1Kg would show all the delivery options but on the whole I think it's the best way to do it and customers will usually select the one that suits them best.

On the rare occasion that someone ordering a 1Kg product selects the 'Big and heavy' option then a simple call or email should clear it up up fairly easily.

Mike

[The Baby Studio]

I sympathise, delivery option in SD are not good enough. Clearly other web software (maybe bespoke) has it better sorted.

I would like to be able to set up delivery types, 1st class 2nd class next day and various weights etc, as you can in SD, but in the product I would like to be able to simply tick The ones I want available to the customer at checkout. So for certain products they would only be offered one or two choices, other products may have a selection of choices.

[abbi_newbie]

It is so frustrating...

I think I am going to have to go backwards and label everything light as 3000kg and so on...

It is such a backward way of doing it but at least from the customer's point of view they won't see the options that are not available to them. If they did - as you said - select big & heavy by accident then this could create extra customer service work unnecessarily. If people are selecting our 'two man booked in' service for example on a lighter product that it cannot go on!.

It would look quite confusing and unprofessional to have all these unsuitable options availble for the smalelr items - it would mean the pallet and two man services would show up where we can't use them and potentially create an awful lot of work for customers services when people select unsuitable services!!

If anyone else has seen any other way of doing this please let me know!

Thanks!

[NormanRouxel]

Don't forget that you'll have to deal with multiple products of differing categories in the Cart.

So if you have a light (but set at 3000Kg) product in the Cart that weight will override any 2 man products also in the Cart that are using a fake small weight.

Using the "Ship Separately" option in a Product Details / Details may help.

[Mike Hughes]

The only option I can think of to do what you want is:

- Use the weight based settings as usual to set up the products and delivery options.

- Get someone to write a little javascript routine for your checkout page that removes/hides the options that are 'under-weight'.

This would effectively give you a weight based checkout that operates on a 'from-to' basis rather than the current 'up to' one.

It shouldn't be that hard to write something to do this. All you'd need to do is setup the minimum weights needed to qualify for each service, read the weight variable*, hide / remove the options that don't satisfy the min weight requirements.

* I think this needs a patch to add the total weight to the cart cookie, something that Norman has already created for earlier versions of sellerdeck.

[chickenhouseman]

Maybe you could give the customer less choice?

I assume you offer 1st class and courier as 2, 1 day options based on price? You could combine these and just call it 1 day delivery

Your shipping table would be first class cost up to the weight where it's best to swap to courier and then continue with courier prices. The weight class for this for this would stop before the 2 man delivery. You could do the same for second class/2 day carrier.

It doesn't solve everything as there would still be the option of the 2 man delivery on everything but it would cut down on the number of choices.

I run mine like this as non-urgent, standard, and pallet. I also use the shipping surcharge on the product for extra heavy pallets.

I always figure that the customer doesn't really care how you get it there just that they know when it will arrive and the cost.

[chickenhouseman]

if something is 10 kg you you don't want to offer that with 2nd class then delete the shipping options above your cut off point and don't use excess

[abbi_newbie]

Is there any way of removing the lines for shipping category?

I was going to use this method instead of weights, but when you right click on the category row 'delete row' shows up but is disabled.

It is almost like it should be allowed to be deleted but it isn't?

I'm not sure what you mean by

"if something is 10 kg you you don't want to offer that with 2nd class then delete the shipping options above your cut off point and don't use excess "

[abbi_newbie]

Oh ok I think I know what you mean....

Yes you can prevent the 2nd class option showing on larger things.

You just can't prevent the larger options showing on the smaller items.

[Mike Hughes]

You just can't prevent the larger options showing on the smaller items.

Without a little bit of javascript/JQuery.

Thinking about it, once your shipping options are confirmed it would be quite simple to to write a bit of logic based code to do this without even needing to know the weight.

i.e.

IF '2nd class option' exists THEN Remove all heavier options
IF 'Special next day option' exists THEN Remove big and heavy options

All it has to do is tidy up the unwanted options from the drop down list.

[Mike Hughes]

Having talked about being able to use javascript to tidy up the options presented I've decided to show an example of how to do this to help anyone thinking of going down this path.

See the details here: http://community.sellerdeck.com/showthread.php?p=351197

[abbi_newbie]

Do you know of any issues this may cause in the newest version of Sellerdeck?

I may test it on one of our smaller sites, thank you!

[NormanRouxel]

The bit of code I posted on http://community.sellerdeck.com/showthread.php?p=351197 was tested on SD 2016.