E-junkie cart system is screwing up the shipping costs

[catjahnke]

The e-junkie cart system is screwing up the shipping costs at the final stage of the sale.



If you go to http://www.catjahnke.com/store.html and choose any CD and then put in the Country and Zip code and hit update you'll see the CORRECT shipping costs BUT once you hit the "Checkout with PayPal" button, the shipping is recalculated and inflated a LOT. A recent transaction from the US has the initial shipping rate at $8.75 for 3 CDs using zip code 48823. The final shipping costs, once you hit the checkout button, are $21.75!!



This is a disaster because we sell tons of Christmas CDs at this time of year but this year the sales are WAY down. I'm sure the shipping error has cost us (and will continue to cost us) hundreds of dollars in lost sales.



Can someone please figure out what is going wrong with the shipping calculations?

[E-junkie_Guru]

I've brought this to our Development team's attention, so they can investigate the matter. You'll know more as soon as we do.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Say, one thing just occurred to me: last I knew, shipping fees calculated in our cart were supposed to override any shipping profiles in your PayPal account settings, but perhaps this has changed for some reason.



In your PayPal Shipping Profiles, make sure you have checked the box to "allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings"; if that was unchecked before, see if checking it fixes your problem.

[catjahnke]

It's already checked. And even if it wasn't, all the shipping details on that PayPal shipping prefs page were set to $0.00 anyway. That was a good idea though.



Did you try out a transaction to see what is happening? It's pretty weird. I set-up the E-Junkie cart over 3 weeks ago and tested all the different shipping details that I created and it worked great BUT I never did hit the "Checkout With PayPal" button; so as far as I know this has been going on for the past 3 weeks.



Hopefully someone can figure out what's going on ASAP. We're trying to sell Christmas CDs and the season for selling holiday albums is going to be over immediately.



Thanks,

Darren

[E-junkie_Guru]

We've tested transactions on your site using your E-junkie account, and we also tested with another method that allows us to test a checkout from our cart using your PayPal email but not referencing your E-junkie account at all, and in both cases PayPal's checkout site applied its own shipping charges rather than the shipping calculated in the cart.



These results, along with the fact that none of the other 10,000+ sellers using our system have reported any similar problems, indicates that something in your own PayPal account settings is causing PayPal's checkout site to override or compound the shipping calculated in your E-junkie cart -- actually, it seems to be adding an extra $5 for the first item and $4 for each additional item in the cart. We would recommend consulting PayPal support to see if there might be any settings other than what you'd already found that could account for that.

[catjahnke]

I have reset everything in my PayPal account. The error is still occurring. I will contact PayPal in the morning and let you know what happens. I've heard horror stories about their "support" - so wish me luck.



D

[catjahnke]

So it turns out that it WAS my fault. I changed the shipping transactions in e-junkie from Canadian dollars to US dollars a few weeks ago as we were getting mostly US sales in the store. After I did that e-junkie must then communicate that info to PayPal and then PayPal uses the US default shipping options instead of the Canadian ones. My PayPal account defaulted to Canadian dollars; but as I mentioned before all of those settings were at $0 with the box "allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings" clicked on. Because of this "override" option I didn't even think to look if there were additional PayPal options for other currencies.



To be fair, it is NOT clear on the PayPal site that there are different shipping currency options as they are all located in a drop-down menu and cannot be seen until you select them. And there is nothing indicating that PayPal users have multiple shipping options for different currencies. Also,if there is an "override" option and my currency setting defaulted to Canadian then I wasn't even thinking that it could be something to do with a different setting buried in a drop-down menu.



Anyway - once I selected US dollars in the PayPal drop-down menu (under: Merchant Services -> Shipping Calculator) all the US shipping costs were visible. And they were, in fact, $5 for item one and $4 for each additional item, and the "allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings" button was NOT checked. So I cleared all the shipping costs (which I'm sure I didn't even have to do) and turned the "override" button on and everything was instantly fixed.



Thanks for doing all that checking for me though. I really had no idea what was happening. When you illuminated e-junkie from the equation that made things much easier for me to solve the problem.



Darren

[sandrab]

Speaking of shipping calculations, we are using PayPal in combination with e-Junkie. In PayPal's Shipping Calculations page, we have not set any options.



On Dec. 9th, I brought up our Holiday 2-for-1 special, in order to see the shipping amount for California Zip 90210 - http://saferelationshipsmagazine.com/holiday-special-2-books-for-20



When you punch in that Zip code or L.A.'s zip code - 90001 - you get $16.80 shipping on a $20 order.



Our e-Junkie cart settings are Shipped from U.S., add $1.50 flat fee for handling, and Shipping Rate Calculator - USPS Cheapest available (excluding Media Mail, etc.)



Orders for other states in the U.S. seem OK, but the California orders are calculating at $16.80.



Can someone please help so we aren't stuck with upset customers and a bunch of refunds to process? Thanks.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Our USPS Cheapest calculator queries USPS.com for the First Class and Priority Mail rates and applies whichever rate is cheaper. You have configured that product as weighing 64 oz., which would be ineligible for First Class (13 oz. limit), so it's obtaining the Priority Mail rate.



I did a manual rate lookup on USPS.com and $15.30 does appear to be the accurate Priority Mail package rate for 64 oz. going from 28766 to 90210, plus your $1.50 Handling fee equals $16.80. Nearby states are similarly high; e.g., shipping the same order to 85701 (Arizona) would be $15.30 (= $13.80 Priority + $1.50 Handling).



You may wish to add Shipping Rules that use the Parcel Post and/or Media Mail calculator, so buyers would be shown rates for those services as well and allowed to pick their preference in the cart before checkout.