My site has been hosted on MC since 2004. The options for estimating/calculating shipping options were not good in 2004 and they have not gotten any better since. As my business has grown, the problems with shipping have only gotten more detrimental.
My situation is this: all of my many products are drop-shipped by the manufacturer. Some can be shipped UPS/FEDEX and many have to be shipped freight. I obviously know which are which.
An ideal solution for me would be to have a feature that tells the shopping cart system which items qualify for UPS -- and then use that shipping calculator -- and which items must ship freight, and use a custom calculator based on weight, total cost or actual freight costs where known.
Even if it only displayed a message that "THIS ITEM SHIPS BY FREIGHT. WE WILL CALL TO CONFIRM THE FREIGHT EXPENSE," that would be an improvement over what we have now. (We do display this message on particular items that ship by freight and there is a disclaimer message in the checkout that the customer must click "yes" on, but neither of those is a real solution to this problem.)
The method I'm using right now is to apply freight costs based on the total checkout amount, but that isn't ideal because it shows as an option for ANY order reaching or exceeding those amounts and scares off customers whose UPS/FEDEX costs are likely much lower.
I am very interested in hearing from other MC vendors in the same situation. If you have figured out a workaround, or are struggling with the same issue, let's put our heads together and share ideas.
Thanks,
Joe
Full Version: Shipping/freight Calculation Problems Support Group
I share your FRUSTRATION in the shipping options limited capabilities. To think there are so many items that can ship freight, while other items ship standard... and MC has not provided us with a way to isolate those products with a higher shipping cost. We stock items that can ship standard UPS, while others deliver via freight. We need BOTH shipping costs to configure during checkout.
It's been a long time since we reviewed MC's custom shipping options, and I just spent about over an hour customizing an "additional freight cost" option based on weight. I figured during checkout we would have customers hit both buttons Standard Shipping PLUS the additional freight (based on rules). Bang on my head... after all that work, I now see that although both options show at checkout, the customer cannot select BOTH buttons... which would have solved the problem. So now we're back to square one... and I also realize why we didn't configure it that way a year ago.... it didn't work then either!
There are workarounds, like adding a variant "surcharge". The problem with that is the shipping is added into the cost of the item once put into the cart. Not good when a customer is comparison shopping based on a unit cost... and your item costs $250 more (because the shipping is added). The customer doesn't see that. You can also have the customer agree to pay for a cost they don't see in their cart. To me, these are not proper solutions, and MC should provide us with tools that are more professional. To go along with the purchase of a domain name, Network Solutions should start selling assembled office furniture. I wonder how they would bill me for shipping that furniture at checkout? Bet they'd fix this shipping thing real quick.
I haven't read any MC announcements that include improvement on custom shipping, especially this much needed feature. We have another site getting ready to launch a cart, and this is one of the first issues we are discussing with the other ecommerce provider. They're very close in offering us a solution that will work. I hope MC can do the same.
If you should find any REAL solutions that work -- other than writing a kazillion disclaimers to your customers at checkout notifying them their order total is WRONG because shipping won't calculate -- please let me know!
In the meantime, count me in on this support group!
It's been a long time since we reviewed MC's custom shipping options, and I just spent about over an hour customizing an "additional freight cost" option based on weight. I figured during checkout we would have customers hit both buttons Standard Shipping PLUS the additional freight (based on rules). Bang on my head... after all that work, I now see that although both options show at checkout, the customer cannot select BOTH buttons... which would have solved the problem. So now we're back to square one... and I also realize why we didn't configure it that way a year ago.... it didn't work then either!
There are workarounds, like adding a variant "surcharge". The problem with that is the shipping is added into the cost of the item once put into the cart. Not good when a customer is comparison shopping based on a unit cost... and your item costs $250 more (because the shipping is added). The customer doesn't see that. You can also have the customer agree to pay for a cost they don't see in their cart. To me, these are not proper solutions, and MC should provide us with tools that are more professional. To go along with the purchase of a domain name, Network Solutions should start selling assembled office furniture. I wonder how they would bill me for shipping that furniture at checkout? Bet they'd fix this shipping thing real quick.
I haven't read any MC announcements that include improvement on custom shipping, especially this much needed feature. We have another site getting ready to launch a cart, and this is one of the first issues we are discussing with the other ecommerce provider. They're very close in offering us a solution that will work. I hope MC can do the same.
If you should find any REAL solutions that work -- other than writing a kazillion disclaimers to your customers at checkout notifying them their order total is WRONG because shipping won't calculate -- please let me know!
In the meantime, count me in on this support group!
QUOTE(joeklim @ Jun 6 2007, 02:39 PM) 
My site has been hosted on MC since 2004. The options for estimating/calculating shipping options were not good in 2004 and they have not gotten any better since. As my business has grown, the problems with shipping have only gotten more detrimental.
My situation is this: all of my many products are drop-shipped by the manufacturer. Some can be shipped UPS/FEDEX and many have to be shipped freight. I obviously know which are which.
An ideal solution for me would be to have a feature that tells the shopping cart system which items qualify for UPS -- and then use that shipping calculator -- and which items must ship freight, and use a custom calculator based on weight, total cost or actual freight costs where known.
Even if it only displayed a message that "THIS ITEM SHIPS BY FREIGHT. WE WILL CALL TO CONFIRM THE FREIGHT EXPENSE," that would be an improvement over what we have now. (We do display this message on particular items that ship by freight and there is a disclaimer message in the checkout that the customer must click "yes" on, but neither of those is a real solution to this problem.)
The method I'm using right now is to apply freight costs based on the total checkout amount, but that isn't ideal because it shows as an option for ANY order reaching or exceeding those amounts and scares off customers whose UPS/FEDEX costs are likely much lower.
I am very interested in hearing from other MC vendors in the same situation. If you have figured out a workaround, or are struggling with the same issue, let's put our heads together and share ideas.
Thanks,
Joe
My situation is this: all of my many products are drop-shipped by the manufacturer. Some can be shipped UPS/FEDEX and many have to be shipped freight. I obviously know which are which.
An ideal solution for me would be to have a feature that tells the shopping cart system which items qualify for UPS -- and then use that shipping calculator -- and which items must ship freight, and use a custom calculator based on weight, total cost or actual freight costs where known.
Even if it only displayed a message that "THIS ITEM SHIPS BY FREIGHT. WE WILL CALL TO CONFIRM THE FREIGHT EXPENSE," that would be an improvement over what we have now. (We do display this message on particular items that ship by freight and there is a disclaimer message in the checkout that the customer must click "yes" on, but neither of those is a real solution to this problem.)
The method I'm using right now is to apply freight costs based on the total checkout amount, but that isn't ideal because it shows as an option for ANY order reaching or exceeding those amounts and scares off customers whose UPS/FEDEX costs are likely much lower.
I am very interested in hearing from other MC vendors in the same situation. If you have figured out a workaround, or are struggling with the same issue, let's put our heads together and share ideas.
Thanks,
Joe
I share your pain! We need to be able to apply individual shipping charges per item and not allowed to be combined with UPS capable items in the shopping cart, if that makes any sense We also drop ship directly from separate manufactures and it gets complicated. Any ideas? Would some type of variant work?
Harry
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