Confusion re selling two different items in same cart

[cathyd]

I plan to sell two items: wristbands and a book. Buyers will be able to buy either of them or both, in any quantity.



Because the wristbands are an odd shape, the post office says they need to be mailed at the parcel rate - $2.62 for 1 oz (same as the ejunkie button in the example cart).



When I tried to set the shipping to figure by weight, however, I can only get the first class letter rate to show up (47 cents), not the parcel rate.



The second item weighs 12 oz. It can ship at the large envelope rate, where a single item would be $3.25.



I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I can combine these in a single cart, but I don't know the best way to do it. If I could get everything to ship by weight, using the Parcels rate, that would be good. But I can't seem to get it to do that.



I've also tried flat rates, but it doesn't work for both options very well.



Any ideas?

[E-junkie_Monster]

Hi Cathy,



If the items are ordered together what kind of packaging/cost would you expect? Do you need the cost to scale up by weight, or would it be acceptable to charge by package (such as 2.62 for a set amount of wristbands or 3.25 for books or books and wristbands together)?

[cathyd]

For single copies of each, that would be okay. (The packaging costs are minimal and covered by the base item cost.)



But I don't want to charge $3.25 per book for an order of, say, 25 books (which is possible -- groups will likely order them).



One option I looked at was charging a $3 base/envelope rate, then an additional 12 cents per wristband for shipping (it's actually a set of three).



But I couldn't figure out how to make that work with the book, which is much more expensive to ship. I could charge, say, $1 per book or something that would be reasonable and cover shipping, but if someone ordered 25 books, $28 shipping seems high. Or maybe not. Maybe that is the way to go.



It just seems rather convoluted. Seems there must be a simpler way.



Thanks for your quick response!

[E-junkie_Monster]

One suggestion I can make would be to set your shipping costs with package types -- you can assign a package type to each product with a set capacity and cost. For example:



Set your wristbands to ship in a "Small Tube" (you can still use whatever packaging you like for the real shipment but tubes have a special property in our programming that will be helpful) and set the packaging capacity for the wristbands to the amount you would be willing to ship in a single $2.62 envelope. Let's say 5 units in this case. You can enter the package and capacity settings within the wristband product's settings at Seller Admin > View/Edit/Delete Products, in the "Shipping/Buyer's Address" section.



Then, in the packaging chart at Seller Admin > Shipping Calculation set the cost of the Small Tube to 2.62. Under these settings every five units of wristbands ordered will cost $2.62 to ship, so the cost will scale up with larger orders but based on quantity rather than weight. And the cost doesn't need to match the exact price for shipping one unit, you could set it to $3.00 or anything that you feel properly covers your average wristband order.



In the book's product settings use the "Regular Tube" package type and set its capacity to 5 as well. Then on the Shipping Calculation screen set the cost of the Regular Tube to $3.25. Like with the wristbands that gives you a repeating cost of $3.25 for every five books sold.



And because you used the Tube package type for both items our system will assume that wristbands can be shipped in the same package as books so that any combination order uses the package and cost settings for books instead of charging for both sets of items separately. Also be sure to delete any shipping rules you may have created so far because otherwise they will continue to apply on top of these package costs.



You can of course adjust the package costs and capacity settings any way you like to get different results, but this may give you an easier way to get your approximate costs instead of using a cost per weight calculation.

[cathyd]

Thank you! I will give that a try.