Can I configure 2 carriage bands?

[richy_roo]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on my situation...

My company supplies chemical products and we have 2 carriage bands: one for hazardous products and one for non-hazardous product.

E.g. carriage on 1Kg of a hazarous product is £15, whilst carriage on a non-hazardous product is £6

At the time it was configured, we set carriage on all items at the higher rate, however I recently looked at the top exit pages on our website and we are dropping a lot of customers during the check-out stage where carriage appears on the order.

Is there any way to configure this in V9? Building carriage into our prices isn't an option (some of the products cost less than the carriage so they would look ludicrously expensive)

Thank you for any information.

Richard

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I believe the usual suggestion is to use weight based shipping, but to use artificial weights instead of real weights, so all non-hazardous products have a very small (or possibly zero weight) and give all hazardous products a high weight.

You would then create two weight bands, one for £6 and one for £15 with the trigger for the higher band set just below the weight you have used for your hazardous products.

I hope the above is clear, although a search of the forum should throw up similar suggestions, usually made by leehack.

Please note: You should ensure that the weight of the hazardous products is high enough so that somebody purchasing lots of the non-hazardous products doesn't reach the trigger level for the next price band.

[animal dreams]

Hi Richard,

Adding to what Darren has suggested, you can select 'ship separately' on the hazardous products. Use a weight (or alternative weight) say 1000 + real weight. This will effectively allow 2 shipping tables with hazardous goods always costed separately to main items.

Needs testing!!

[richy_roo]

Thanks so much

I knew in the back of my mind there would be a way to get around it but I just couldn't figure it out

[leehack]

There's a specific 'shipping' forum too, always best to look and put your shipping questions in there, all in one place then. Both solutions suggested are ways to do what you want though, you can also use category based shipping for the hazardous products.

[richy_roo]

Hi again,

I am greatful for your suggesttions, but I'm afraid I'm still struggling...

I perhaps should have mentioned this earlier: We do not have just 2 carriage charges, we have 2 carrage calculators. To calculate carriage, we identify if a product is to be sent by a hazardous goods courier, or a regular courier, then we see what each courier charges for sending a package of the desired weight. If anything in the consignment is hazardous, we default to the hazardous goods calculator, whilst if nothing in the consignment is hazardous, we default to the non-hazardous goods calculator.

All the suggestions above (*I think*) fall down when you take into account a mixture of hazardous and non-hazardous products, unless there is a way to say 'carriage on this item is £x, however if it is mixed in a cart with a hazardous product it becomes £y'. Also the shipping categories won't work because the individual item carriage weight in reality can range from 500 grams to over 1,000Kg.

Does this make sense? I hope it does - if you need me to try and exlpain it again please let me know. Also if this thread belongs in another section of the forum, perhaps a moderator or administrator can move it?

I look forward to any information.

Richard

[leehack]

If hazardous and non-hazardous products are bought, i'd imagine it is all shipped as hazardous? If not and you are looking for actinic to split the purchases up, i don't think that is going to happen. Sounds to me like hazardous products need heavy weights and non-hazardous need light weights, you then have a matrix to charge accordingly. If the buyer does not need to know whether its hazardous shipping or not, keep it called something standard as surely getting the correct cost applied is the only thing that counts? Don't see weight as real weight see it as a unit of measurement that you can apply to each product as you wish.

For instance if hazardous items are 100kg and non-hazardous are 1kg, if you setup a weight band of 199kg, then it will allow one hazardous and 99 non to be shipped, all under the same schedule. Don't set the bands to be the same as the heavy products, set them as one unit less than 2 x the heavy product as that gap in between can be used for other things, yet still charge the same.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I think the only solution will be as Lee has suggested above.

If you can post back with a list of the weight bands you want to use for your hazardous products and a list of weight bands for you non-hazardous we can then suggest a more detailed weight table for you to use.

As Lee has said, I think if a customer purchases both hazardous and non-hazardous goods on the same order he will have to pay the higher hazardous rate.

[richy_roo]

Thank you for your feedback, it is greatly appreciated

If hazardous and non-hazardous products are bought, i'd imagine it is all shipped as hazardous?

Yes that is correct

Sounds to me like hazardous products need heavy weights and non-hazardous need light weights, you then have a matrix to charge accordingly. If the buyer does not need to know whether its hazardous shipping or not, keep it called something standard as surely getting the correct cost applied is the only thing that counts? Don't see weight as real weight see it as a unit of measurement that you can apply to each product as you wish.

I follow this

For instance if hazardous items are 100kg and non-hazardous are 1kg, if you setup a weight band of 199kg, then it will allow one hazardous and 99 non to be shipped, all under the same schedule. Don't set the bands to be the same as the heavy products, set them as one unit less than 2 x the heavy product as that gap in between can be used for other things, yet still charge the same.

I think I follow this too, however I think it's flawed, which I shall explain...

If you can post back with a list of the weight bands you want to use for your hazardous products and a list of weight bands for you non-hazardous we can then suggest a more detailed weight table for you to use.

As Lee has said, I think if a customer purchases both hazardous and non-hazardous goods on the same order he will have to pay the higher hazardous rate.

Ok, let's just say these are the weights (the actual ones are not nice round numbers, but the principle is the same)

NON HAZARDOUS
KG Weight
25 £10
50 £15
100 £20
1000 £40
1000+ £75

HAZARDOUS
KG Weight
100025 £20
100050 £30
1000100 £40
10001000 £80
10001000+ £150

My question is this: what happens if someone orders 2 x 25Kg of something hazardous? The weight would be 100025 x 2 = 200050Kg, which would cost £150 (but it should cost £30)

I'm probably missing something fundamental/being an idiot and look forward to someone proving me wrong shortly

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

What is the actual weight of the lightest and heaviests products in the both the hazardous and non-hazardous category.

What is the heaviest total weight of non-hazardous goods likely to be for a single order.

You could use grams instead kg for non-hazardous products and keep hazardous products in kg.
So a non-hazardous product weighing 25kg would be entered as 0.025kg, but a 25kg hazardous product could be listed at 25kg or 250kg, this avoids the need for such large numbers.

For the maths to work, the artificial weight should be a multiple of the actual weight.

[Jan]

If you do it like this

HAZARDOUS
KG Weight
25000 £20
50000 £30
100000 £40
200000 £80
200001+ £150

then I think it will work

Regards,

[leehack]

200,000 Kg would be £40 in your example, it's a number remember, you can order 1 million Kg for £40 in that matrix. I think you are getting hooked on the first number and not seeing how it would get charged. I'd have to agree though that your bands are huge, actinic will probably soil itself trying to work them out, 10 million kg is a little OTT. As i mentioned forget the label 'weight' think of it as a unit of measurement.

[leehack]

If you set them up as suggested, people are going to get charged excessively when they also have a non-hazardous product. That charge will be unrealistic, you have to build some scope in on the tiers to allow this.

If people order one non-hazardous product and 5 feathers, it's not going to work like that as it will move them into the next tier, charging an extra £10 to deliver the feather aspect of the order.

[richy_roo]

Hi everyone,

Thank you again for all the info, however I'm sorry to say
I can't for the life of me get my head around how this system could work sorry

Surely the customer is going to be massively undercharged for carriage if they order a load of non-hazardous items, combined with a single hazardous one E.g. Customer orders 20 x 25Kg of non-hazardous and 1 x 500g of hazardous. I simply cannot get my head around this.

What is the actual weight of the lightest and heaviests products in the both the hazardous and non-hazardous category

HAZARDOUS
Lightest 1.2 Kg
Heaviest 200 Kg

NON-HAZARDOUS
Lightest 1g (one gram)
Heaviest 1,100Kg (one thousand one hundred kilo's)

What is the heaviest total weight of non-hazardous goods likely to be for a single order.

In the 4 months we have had e-commerce, the heaviest to date has been 7,700 Kg, so I would guess about 20,000 Kg (for the record if someone ordered that much stuff from us I would be delirious )

If someone could help explain how this system could work I would be very grateful

Thank you

Richard

[leehack]

Maybe farming out the work and then looking at what they did is your best bet, i think there's been more than enough pointers and direction to manage this, perhaps you just can't grasp it, which is fine, shipping can tie you up in knots at times.