Yesterday while testing our site before launch I discovered a major problem with the UPS real-time shipping option in MonsterCommerce. I placed a test order with 10 products (20 lbs each) and proceeded to check out. To my surprise I received a message stating "Shipping is not available to that address". So naturally I rechecked the test customer account I set up in MonsterCommerce and found that there was nothing wrong with the zip code or address. Upon lowering the number of products to 7, making the weight of the entire order 140 lbs, I was presented with a shipping amount that was totally off (too low in fact - there was a $25.05 difference between UPS's site and the real-time shipping amount provided by MonsterCommerce). I tried a variety of zip codes as shipping destinations and NOT ONCE did the MonsterCommerce UPS real-time shipping calculator come close to UPS's shipping quote calculator at www.ups.com.

It appears that our MonsterCommerce site will not allow a customer to check out when their ENTIRE order has a combined weight of over 150lbs. Surely this has to be wrong. Most our individual packages would weigh under 30lbs each. To place a 150lb limit on the entire cart for UPS real-time shipping is pure stupidity. Especially, if the individual product weights are under UPS's per package weight rule. For us it appears that the UPS Real-Time shipping option in MonsterCommerce is useless.

Anyone have any ideas on what is wrong with MonsterCommerce's UPS real-time shipping? Yes, I know there is the custom shipping option but for residential orders (unless the order is really large as in product quantity or weight) we rather use the UPS real-time shipping option.

We have other issues with MonsterCommerce as well but I'll start a new thread for them.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Treads USA and Welcome to the forums!!!

I believe the problem you are seeing is a limitation of the UPS integration. I believe the majority of UPS options do not quote rates for items over 70 pounds. The differences are also do to some limitation of the integration. Definately feel free to contact tech support and we can discuss it with you.

Thanks

Brian

I appreciate the reply but I think you missed the point of my post. Our individual products wouldn't weigh over 30lbs, most of the products we have are well below 20lbs each. For example if a customer were to purchase ten 60" Red Oak straight stair treads the weight of each tread is only 20lbs (total of 200lbs for the entire order) However, it appears that a customer can only purchase 7 of these treads on a single order. In other words the way MonsterCommerce has implemented the real-time shipping MonsterCommerce appears to treat the ENTIRE cart as one big heavy product and if the TOTAL weight of the cart exceeds 150lbs then our customers would receive that error message that I mentioned before.

I thought I'd let everyone know that I just got off the phone with MC tech support. In a nutshell I was told that the 150lb per CART limit was UPS's fault. So, if any of you merchants want to sell products that have a combined weight TOTALING 150lbs on a SINGLE ORDER you can forget using the MonsterCommerce's UPS Real-Time shipping option.

I haven't seen this problem with real-time shipping in other carts I've delt with in the past but I guess there is always a first.

p.s. The MC tech I spoke with by phone earlier was very helpful and I thank him for his assistance.

My last cart would ask what the biggest weight for a package that I would ship and then added another package after that limit was met. So it is definetely not UPS's fault...

I know, the last ecommerce system I dealt with didn't have the problem either. Maybe MonsterCommerce doesn't know how to fix their problem. I was looking over the page for pulling real-time price quotes from UPS's system and I didn't notice such a limitation either.

Link: http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/bussol/of...line_tools.html

Oh well.

Change your high weight in your shipping options up to 1000 lbs. I think that this will fix the problem.
Steve

deerefun,

Unfortunately changing the high weight in the UPS Ground shipping option didn't work. I tried raising the 150lb limit on UPS Ground to 350lbs then 500lbs and finally 1000lbs. I still received the "Shipping is not available to that address" message on orders with total weights exceeding 150lbs.

Thank you very much for the suggestion, it was well worth the try. Maybe will fix the problem sometime in the distant future.

quote name='deerefun' date='Apr 25 2007, 01:23 PM' post='123896']
Change your high weight in your shipping options up to 1000 lbs. I think that this will fix the problem.
Steve
[/quote]

Treads,
Thank you for pointing this issue out. We didn't even realize this had become a probelm until you pointed it out here. When we 1st started out several years ago the 1000 lb. trick cured the problem but apparently we have another BUG that needs fixed.

Brian,
If this is a UPS issue why did it work for several years and not work now? We used to be able to add 10 70 lb items to the cart and it would calculate a rate. In our case if you would just provide the option to mark an item to ship seperately in the product manager like I have been asking for since the day we started with this would not now be an issue. So what kind of work-a-round are we looking at on this one?
Steve

deerefun,

Are you having the same problem as well? Were the UPS shipping rates returned by the online tools fairly accurate when yours actually worked? As you have probably already read in my posts above... I actually have two problems with the UPS real-time shipping. The first being the fact that orders cannot weigh over 150 lbs and the second being the fact that when rates are returned they are WAY off.

Treads, When it worked the only miscalculation was that it didn't add in the addional package fee.
Good luck
Steve

For clarity, since I started working at MC in January of 2003, back in version 3.x of our software, real-time shipping has NEVER worked over 150 pounds. I apologize for any confusion on this subject, but it was one of my very first tech support phone calls back then and as far as I know it has never changed. Simply put, the major shipping carriers like UPS/FedEx do not allow rate quotes to be auto-generated over a certain amount (which is usually 150, although USPS may be different now). Our shopping cart software takes the total weight of the order, the origin ZIP and the destination ZIP and posts them through to the carriers and a rate quote is generated. I have always assumed the option to have it generate separate quotes per product has been explored by development, but I imagine that it was too slow (for a few products okay, but for a large purchase of ten products or more?). I do know that the idea has been discussed and is logged as an option in the future with development.

In the meantime, for all orders over 150 pounds, custom shipping options should be able to cover most orders, although they admittedly don't vary much by location (only domestic/international). This is also an area of possible improvement later.

As far as the accuracy of rates under 150 pounds, except for differences in the choices you may be making on UPS.com, they always test 100% correct for me. The calculator in the software make assumptions such that you are using Daily Pickup and your own packaging and so forth, which may be different than what you are choosing. Also, there is a setting under Checkout > Checkout Settings > Global Settings > Return Real-time UPS Residential Rates that may affect it a few dollars as well.

I hope that this helps. Thanks!

Really? 's UPS real-time shipping option definitely doesn't return 100% accurate figures as you have suggested. The shipping rates returned are not even close...even with the residential rate set to Yes. As much as I hate to say it, we've decided this morning to do it all shipping costs by hand. On a side note, due to the type of products we sell the typical total weight of an order would almost always be over the artificial 150lb limit.


Bingo! Currently we do not use Daily Pickup but we do use our own packaging. Alas, as a customer, I guess we'll never be able to use real-time shipping.


Good idea deerefun! I second the suggestion of adding a ship separately option.


Thanks deerefun, AcroJedi.

p.s. My I offer a suggestion for to consider? When 's sales people discuss the features of MonsterCommerce with a potential customer I think the 150lb real-time shipping limit per order should be mentioned. The documentation also needs to be changed in order to clarify the limitation.