dummy item

[jxm28788]

ok, I've had a few examples recently where it would have been really useful to allow the customer to go to the website and just select the delivery but with no items (a couple of clever dicks who found a free delivery hidden away in one of the foreign countries that said 'do not use unless instructed' and a foreign customer who exceeded the delivery weight and has chosen to pay double delivery to get the parcel).

As I operate this part time and want as little involvement with customer as possible it is clearly preferable to be able to instruct them to go back to the website and pay for the delivery again than it is to have them phone me or me phone them for me to manually process the credit card details.

So what I need is some sort of dummy item, that doesn't cost anything that they can add to the basket and choose the appropriate delivery. Obviously I want the dummy item to be hidden on a page that is not linked to by the rest of the site.

So basically I would send them a link, say select this item and go to checkout.

How can I do this (or is there a better way)?

[cdicken]

Are you taking payment online then? If you weren't then you could add a cash adjustment to the order to bring the order total to the right amount before charging the credit card.

Otherwise, a product of zero cost is quite a good idea. Alternatively, create a product with a cost of '0.01' and a weight of '0'. You could then edit the product layout for this product and replace:

NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTQUANTITY

with

<!-- NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTQUANTITY -->Enter the delivery amount required in pence: <input type="text" size="10" name="Q_NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTREFERENCE" value="0">

Make sure you are using a shopping mode of 'Quantity on Product Page'. That way, customers enter the cost to pay in the product page.

You just need to make sure that the product itself will not incur shipping. Click here for instructions.