Wacky Shipping Request

[Letterdance]

Okay, a free hug to anyone who can answer this one.

On the site I am creating, the customer is using USPS shipping, calculated by weight.

Except for they are offering jewelry, which they want to charge a flat $15 no matter how much jewelry is ordered.

The jewelry ships separately (I have that option checked on all the jewelry products).

I tried to set up the flat fee through Discounts.

I thought if I made a group called Jewelry, and then made all the jewelry, say, 4000 lbs, I'd be able to specify "no shipping charges" if the order exceeded 4000 lbs.

Then I could apply a sort of "negative discount" (a surcharge) for the Jewelry group, which has an option for "only one discount allowed per order"

Problems: I could only apply a surcharge based on dollars, not weight. Discounts could only be discounts; negative numbers are not allowed in the Discount fields.

Another problem: what if someone orders jewelry AND something else? They won't be charged shipping for the other item because the whole order will exceed 4000 lbs.

I guess the easiest way to handle this...not the most elegant...would be to have an optional charge of $15 that the user has to select at checkout, but I have no idea how I would add that in.

Any ideas?

[Mike Hughes]

Set the jewellery to have a weight of 0.0 lbs and have a charge band of $15 for up to 0.1lbs (or whatever).

Mike

[Letterdance]

I just saw this

I am not using bands. I am using UPS shipping. Can I have both bands and UPS shipping? I had considered setting all the jewelry to weight 1000 lbs, then having a separate charge at 1000 lbs, but it looks like I can only do that if I have shipping bands. The other concern was, what if they order jewelry + some other item. Then the total order will weight over 1000 lbs, but they won't be charged properly for the other item's shipping cost.

I'd like to set this up with components...have a $15 for jewelry, and a limit of one. I tried to set it up this way, but it didn't work.

[TraceyG]

Hi Suzanne,

I have been looking at this but cannot see a way of doing what your client wants due to the way that UPS works. I'm afraid that surcharges can only be applied to the whole basket value and not per product group or weight.

[Letterdance]

Thanks for investigating this for me. We currently have a rather clunky solution: a note on each product that they will be billed separately $15 for the Jewelry. It seems like it could be done with the discounts feature somehow, or as an add-on product.

[TraceyG]

I will add it to our wish-list for you but I'm not sure how to get it to override the UPS normal shipping options.

[Letterdance]

Thanks

Thanks for putting that on the wish list.

[sbetzen]

Wacky shipping

I currently am not a customer of actinic... but always watching developments in others. This was one issue I was not able to find a solution for anywhere. One of my sites (www.faircoffee.com ships from 2 different roasters. If an order is made from both roasters... another shipping charge should be done... I was able to "hack" out a solution that would work... but is not ideal. This seems like it would be a common issue for people who ship from more than one location... basically we need a system where the shipping module will have "catagories/ID codes" that each house a whole Module (ie... set up a new location, zip or just another shipping charge). The Items will be identified using a code that calls up the shipping module... if 2 modules are called for then two shipping charges (independent of eachother) are added to the order.
This is kind of like having multiple shops in one... with one checkout. I am watching for this in my next purchased solution. I won't be buying any time soon... as my other site www.ecowindchimes.com is pretty strait forward.
When convincing people who allready have a purchased solution to switch... you need to make it worth the time (of a redesign) and the money. I am currently looking... but unlikely to switch any time soon.
It would be nice to have one solution to use on both my sites.

Sincerely,
Stephen Betzen
www.Ecowindchimes.com
www.Faircoffee.com
www.Dallasreading.com (wifes site)

[cdicken]

Hi Stephen

Thanks for the comments. It is always interesing hearing about what other people who are not using Actinic think about us.

The thing about shipping is that it is a difficult thing to model a system which is flexible eough to model a wide variery of scenarios (such as the shipping from different locations issue that you mention) and yet is possible for mere mortals to actually take and use

I'll add your comments to our wish list.

Chris

PS I had to remove the mentions of the other solutions you use from your post as we have a policy about not namechecking competitors. Hope that's OK.

[sbetzen]

Thanks Chris for the reply.
I can see how it would be confusing for someone to navigate it is they are running the "typical" store where they are shipping the Item... or shipping from one dropshipper... and agree that you would loose more customers due to confusion should dealing with it be automatic. However it could be added as an option that you would have to engage before it could confuse you It could even be an addon module (though do this too much and you will be nickel and diming your customers and they will leave).
That being said... the grass always looks greener on the other side. From my stand point... though you cost more... it does seem that you get more for it. Then again I really can't know how much I would like you if I were using you... I thought my current solution would work great... but am now having 2nd thoughts.

Oh well I will look at the situation again in 6 months and may change if business is doing well.

Sincerely,
Stephen Betzen
www.Ecowindchimes.com
www.Faircoffee.com
www.Dallasreading.com

[advwebsys]

Perhaps there ***is*** a way

Chris - I agree completely with the fact that shipping is a very complex area and that there is no general solution.

Please see the thread I started on 17 December (Creating a custom shipping charge calculation) which deals with another problem involving calculation of shipping costs.

In my instance, being a realtively proficient perl programmer <PAT_ON_THE_BACK>, i could solve my problem with perhaps 20 lines of code ***if*** I was passed references to customer data and ordered items which, of course, would be treated as read-only, and a reference to the variable where i could return the shipping charge.

It harks back to the mainframe days where operating systems provided 'user exits' at various points to allow for application-specific processing.

While I fully understand that every Actinic customer does NOT write perl, think of the business opportunity for me <VERY BIG GRIN>.