Issues With Shipping Calculation

[frozenq]

Hello,



So we recently switched over from simple Paypal buttons to E-Junkie so that we could offer a better shopping experience for our customers as well as being able to manage discounts, something Paypal does not offer. Unfortunately, we've been encountering some shipping issues.



The first issue was that it wasn't asking for peoples' addresses. I fixed this problem.



The second issue is the way that E-Junkie seems to do things. Previously, through Paypal, I would input a price and weight, create the button, and Paypal would handle the shipping. Of course, Paypal allows the customer to select their shipping type. Is there any way to be able to use this Paypal shipping calculation so that my customers can select their shipping? We ship to almost every country in the world, so USPS cheap rate isn't going to work out, but I can't charge nearby customers the UPS rate when they could have it cheaply shipped via USPS.



A third issue is defining packaging. That's not really how we do things. Can I just leave the package definitions blank? I have all of the 'shipped' weights already listed under each product. The problem is, say I'm selling mugs. I have to sell those mugs on one page. However, I have a tiny mug that I ship in a tiny box, a normal mug in a regular box, and a jumbo mug in a big box. If I'm selling all of these on the same page, can I just avoid defining the packaging?



I followed the shipping instructions carefully with the exception of the packaging. I didn't define anything specifically, since the weight of the product is the weight already in the box and ready to be sent out.



I hope this isn't too confusing, and I appreciate any help.



Thanks.

[E-junkie_Monster]

Hello,



It's certainly fine to skip defining packaging or package costs and weights, that is merely an option that is available for merchants who wish to use it and it isn't necessarily required depending on how you set your shipping costs.



If you do wish to use the USPS calculators we provide then I would recommend at least putting all of your products into the same packaging type (like Regular Box) and enter the highest quantity of that item you could possibly fit into a box as the packaging capacity for that product.



The USPS calculators work by getting a quote from the post office website based on what we figure to be the weight and number of packages necessary for an order -- so if you leave everything at a packaging capacity of one the quote we get will assume that every single item is going in an individual package which will return an artificially high result.



If you want to use PayPal's shipping settings instead of ours that would be possible, but we'd not be able to give you direct advice on setting things up on PayPal's end. There is a setting within your PayPal account that tells them to let our shipping settings override theirs, within your PayPal settings be sure NOT to check the box that reads "Click here to allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above (if profile settings are enabled)."



Otherwise it would still be possible to use our shipping feature to charge different rates on factors such as the country your buyer is in, you don't have to use a USPS rate across the board.



Shipping rules with different methods of calculation such as charging a flat rate or charging a certain cost per unit of weight or items ordered are available, and all of these different methods can be applied to orders based on their quantity or destination. If you can give us a break down of what cost you want to charge in what circumstances we can go into greater detail about how to establish those costs.

[frozenq]

Thanks for your response.



We do shipping by unit weight. I have all of the correct shipped weights listed within my buttons. I also have the 'get the buyers address' checked. Even though I have all the correct settings, Paypal seems to be overriding it, because they are being charged no shipping.



So for the example, I'm selling a 160mm Liquid Fusion Reservoir for 89.99. It weighs 32 ounces and we are not using the stock system.



But is there any way for the consumer to be able to select their shipping method? Previously, people were able to, and that was something that was pretty important. The problem is, we like to give the customers the option of Priority or First Class for both international and domestic.



Sorry if that is all over the place. I hope it helps.

[frozenq]

I should also add that right now our customers are NOT being charged shipping, which is even a larger problem than them being able to select shipping options. I looked for the Paypal settings to change, as I'm sure its a problem with them and not the cart, but either the links are broken or I can't find it anywhere.



Do you know exactly where that check box is in Paypal?



Thanks.

[E-junkie_Guru]

At the bottom of your PayPal shipping profile settings, there should be an option to "allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above". However, I couldn't find any E-junkie cart buttons to test on your site; you seem to be using PayPal's own cart instead of ours at present?



I verified that your E-junkie shipping settings all seem correct and pasted some of your button codes into a test page of my own, and the cart calculated shipping just fine, which was carried over to PayPal checkout without any problem. I noticed that all your products have a Packing capacity of 1, so we'll be obtaining USPS rates presuming each item would be shipped in a separate parcel rather than combined into a common parcel together.



You can offer buyers a selection of shipping rates/methods by creating more than one Shipping Rule in Seller Admin > Cart Shipping Settings > Next screen. Right now you have one Rule using the USPS Cheapest calculation method, meaning we'll query the USPS rate API to obtain the First Class and Priority rates for the buyer's order, then we'll apply whichever one is cheaper. You could add another Shipping Rule for USPS Priority in particular, so in cases where First Class is available and cheaper than Priority, we would also offer the choice of a Priority rate in the buyer's cart as well.

[frozenq]

Thanks for your response.



The entire site is uploaded with the E-Junkie buttons and carts, so I'm not sure what's going on there. People have been using it with success... minus that shipping issue.



Thanks for checking on that code for me. I appreciate it. I fiddled around with some settings this afternoon and have gotten the shipping calculations to work. I still can't find the section in Paypal that says to allow the transaction-based shipping values to override. Is it going to charge them shipping twice if I can't find this checkbox?



Also, if I add a second rule, will it poll both UPS and USPS? Or can I only use one.



Thanks again for all of your help. I really appreciate how useful that the community and help pages are on E-Junkie.



Edit: I just did some more looking and have not been able to find the allow 'transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above' check box. No matter which instructions I follow, it always leads me to a page that doesn't have that on it. The PayPal site has changed, so maybe it doesn't exist anymore? Or its somewhere else?



Edit part 2: I did get the two separate shipping methods to work, and now a drop down shows up.

[E-junkie_Guru]

PayPal has been changing a lot of things about their site and settings lately, so perhaps they have moved or removed that setting without any fanfare announcing it. This was all I could find about it:

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_ProfileAndTools#id08A9EK00EE4



If I'm reading that right, it looks like now they allow cart-based shipping to override profile-based shipping by default, unless you deliberately disable the override for specific shipping settings in your PayPal profile? If so, that seems to be the reverse of how things used to work. I'd suggest contacting them for any clarification you may require about that, and let us know what you find out, so we can update our recommendations. :^)

[frozenq]

Yeah, that looks to be about right. I will double check that and get back to you. However, they did definitely get rid of that check box that is mentioned a few times on the E-Junkie info pages.



Thanks again. I'll let you know what I find.