Exclude product from shipping - Basis: Value

[graphicz]

Client has thousands of products, shipping is based on value.

Has anyone a solution to the frankly ridiculous situation where Sellerdeck only lets you specify zero shipping for a product it the basis is weight?

Client is selling membership but whatever we do SD adds shipping.

* Exclude from shipping doesn't work.

* Create a FreeDel categogry and select that category for the 'membership' doesn't work

* Using Digital Download (the download is a little membership certificate) doesn't work as Sellerdeck adds shipping to digital downloads if the shipping basis is value.

Who at SD thought this was a good idea?

Has anyone a solution?????

Thank you

[tonygg]

We had the same problem as we wanted to offer free pattern downloads. We could not find a workaround and had to move everything over to weight based postage. We set it up that the weight bands matched the price bands and wight matched the price the customer pays. It is not great but does work.

SellerDeck do not see the feature only working if you have shipping by weight as a bug. It appears to be a feature. Really hard to understand the logic and very frustrating.

Sorry I could not help with a fix.

Thanks

[graphicz]

Coupled with increasingly frustrating exchanges with support and with it ending up with Ian Biggs and the ensuing resonating silence this further illustrates the widening gulf between Sellerdeck's version of reality and what customers actually would like and expect.

I wrestled with this in 2005 when I worked for a large music store and had to shift all the pricing to weight then. Twelve years later nothing has changed and SD still think this shipping model is a good idea.

[PJ ENG]

Coupled with increasingly frustrating exchanges with support and with it ending up with Ian Biggs and the ensuing resonating silence this further illustrates the widening gulf between Sellerdeck's version of reality and what customers actually would like and expect.

I wrestled with this in 2005 when I worked for a large music store and had to shift all the pricing to weight then. Twelve years later nothing has changed and SD still think this shipping model is a good idea.

I don’t like to keep on beating up on SD, but it's this sort of thing that desperately needs to be looked at. I understand SD towers going down the marketing route but i don’t think they have a product to back it up.

I really think they lack the real world experience in running a Ecom store with 1000’s of different products shipping all over the world.

Shipping is the biggest single selling point as no one wants to pay for it, neither the customer nor the store owner. So getting it right should be a priority, its great if you are selling the same widget just to the UK but we don’t we ship worldwide with a varying different weight of products.

Like your customer we set shipping up by value and have over 10,000 products, how on earth I can change that and set it up to do it by weight?

If you find out let me know

[Mike Hughes]

Like your customer we set shipping up by value and have over 10,000 products, how on earth I can change that and set it up to do it by weight?

If you find out let me know

If you just want to use weight as a proxy for value that can then be adjusted for a few products then a fairly simple excel macro could go through your catalog, read the product value and write back an equivalent weight.

It's important to remember that 'Weight' in sellerdeck shipping can mean lots of things such as weight, size, volume, value. or whatever numerical scale you might want to use. As such it's much more effective for setting shipping charges and Sellerdeck have made it much more flexible than simple value based shipping.

It is a pain as manufacturers haven't really caught on to the need for retailers to have proper weight / volumetric data for to set shipping charges but if all you have is the value to work off then converting that into a 'weight' based equivalent that can then be adjusted if necessary is relatively straightforward to do as described above.

Mike

[graphicz]

I am guessing I would copy the prices into the weight column in the database and divide by 100 as database prices are in pence. Then going forward add the same value to weight as to price as new products are added. Unless anyone knows better?

[tonygg]

I am guessing I would copy the prices into the weight column in the database and divide by 100 as database prices are in pence. Then going forward add the same value to weight as to price as new products are added. Unless anyone knows better?

This is what we do.

[Mike Hughes]

That's probably the easiest way to do it and least like to confuse anyone..

Note that the Product Weight field in the database is the one called ShippingOpaqueData in the Product Table.

[PJ ENG]

If you just want to use weight as a proxy for value that can then be adjusted for a few products then a fairly simple excel macro could go through your catalog, read the product value and write back an equivalent weight.

It's important to remember that 'Weight' in sellerdeck shipping can mean lots of things such as weight, size, volume, value. or whatever numerical scale you might want to use. As such it's much more effective for setting shipping charges and Sellerdeck have made it much more flexible than simple value based shipping.

It is a pain as manufacturers haven't really caught on to the need for retailers to have proper weight / volumetric data for to set shipping charges but if all you have is the value to work off then converting that into a 'weight' based equivalent that can then be adjusted if necessary is relatively straightforward to do as described above.

Mike

Mike, i don’t think that would work for us as we have very light products that are quite expensive take a ECU module less than 1kg but cost £800 then we have products like motorcycle chains and sprocket kit say 7KG for £30.00 and a whole heap in-between.

I don’t think you can just waive a magic wand over the database and it will change it all, I fear it would have to be done on item by item bases and with an in-depth knowledge of the product and your shipping partner’s tariffs.

I don’t think the actual weight from the manufacture would have as you can have an item that is oversize but only weighs 2 kg take a 6ft LED light fitting.

I think what it needs is a mix of value and weight, I don’t have any other experience other than SD to compare with, how do others platforms handle shipping

[Mike Hughes]

I think I know what you're saying but the whole thing with using the Sellerdeck Shipping by weight option is that you can set it to whatever you want. It doesn't have to be the actual weight. It can reflect the weight and the size and the value in a single variable.

At the end of the day, we all have to decide on the number of different shipping options (and usually bands within each option) that we want to offer our customers and then find a way of allocating products to the correct options and band. Using "weight" as a proxy number allows us to do that and provides a pretty flexible model for ensuring things still work with a mix of different products types.

Maybe if it wasn't called weight but something more along the lines of a shipping 'Index' that points to the correct shipping options and band within those options then people wouldn't be so against it.

As you say though there is no magic wand that can do it for you. You have to decide how you want to charge for delivery and then decide which products fit in which delivery charge.

In an ideal world I'd like to be able to set up a number of different shipping categories such as small, medium, large, valuable, time critical, etc and then assign each product to a category and give it a weight. Then I'd want to map each combination to a number of delivery services and bands that customers could choose from.

That would be quite a lot of work to do though and we can get most of the way there by using 'weight' as a more general shipping index / indicator.

Mike

[tonygg]

If you take the weight method to simulate price band shipping (as we do) then when you have sale items or use the % off marketing module you need to manually adjust the weight to reflect the sale/discount price and readjust after the sale is gone. It is a bit of a pain but we have an access routine to do it.

[zgap111]

I think what it needs is a mix of value and weight

It's what we've want, and I've been pushing them since v8 for such a feature.
- recently they quoted £1000+ for such a feature, we declined - we want it permanent (avoid re-applying scripts etc on every update/upgrade on every site)

==============================

For the free shipping on value:

We've always used the "Basis" = "weight by kg"
(and mix in a "Basis" = "Alternative weight" for a UK free shipping table)
but is it possible to have a mix of "Weight by kg" and "Value"?

I also see on the product itself :
Details > Shipping Details : Tick box for "Exclude From Shipping Band Calculation"
= does this apply nil shipping? would that work for value based?

[graphicz]

To convert Shipping by Value to Shipping by Weight

First take a site snapshot and make copies of ActinicCatalog.mdb and SimpleShipping.mdb just in case.
You can find SimpleShipping.mdb in the ShipControl folder in your site folder. ActinicCatalog.mdb is in your site folder.

In SimpleShipping.mdb Change nCalculationBasis from 2 to 0 in BandDefinition

In SimpleShipping.mdb in Bands Delete any existing weight rows, then change the Calculation basis from Value to Weight leaving everything else the same

In ActinicCatalog.mdb Product copy prices into Excel, divide by 100* then past into ShippingOpaqueData.

Going forward when new products are added enter the same value in price and in weight.

Enjoy excluding products from shipping!

You will be able to exclude products from shipping by giving them a weight of '0'

Usual disclaimers apply!

*
In a blank cell somewhere, enter the value 100.
Select the cell and press Ctrl+C. This copies the value to the Clipboard.
Select the cells that you want to divide by 100.
On the Home tab of the ribbon, click the down-arrow under the Paste tool. Excel displays a few options for your pasting pleasure.
Choose the Paste Special option. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Paste Special dialog box.
In the Operation area of the dialog box, select the Divide radio button.
Click OK.
https://excelribbon.tips.net/T011229...s_by_1000.html

[graphicz]

To convert Shipping by Value to Shipping by Weight

I can also do this for you by running an SQL kindly created by Andy Barrow of Codepath.biz
Please conact me for details (info@graphicz.co.uk).