Over Charging Customers for Shipping

[mkp007]

My apologies if this has already been addressed in another topic. I tried searching and couldn't find anything.



The problem is that if you add a product to the cart individually, you get a shipping rate for both. But if you add them together in the cart, you get a shipping rate that is greater than the sum of the individual shipping rates. Why?



To test this out, if you go to my accessories page and add a tote bag to the cart (use zip code 87112)



http://www.bagtoss.com/accessories.htm scroll down to find the tote bags.



Shipping charge is $4.52.



Now, scroll down and add a Score Table (the $49 one)



Shipping charge is now $22.26. This is when both items are in the shopping cart.



Now remove the tote bag from the cart and the shipping is $11.26. This is for the Score Table only.



So, $4.52+$11.26 = $15.78 which is $6.48 less than if both items are in the cart.



Basically, the customers are encouraged to purchase one item at a time which is silly. I don't know how any of my settings would cause this problem to occur. The tote bag is set for a small box and the Score Table for a regular box. There is easily enough room and weight in the Regular box for the tote bag so you would hope the shipping would be like $13 for both items.



Thanks

[E-junkie_Guru]

If you always ship all items in each order together in the same parcel, make sure you configure each product to use the same Packaging Type, and with an absurdly high Capacity like 9999 that would never be reached.



If you've defined a range of different packaging types with varying empty Weight and/or Cost settings (in Seller Admin > Cart Shipping Settings), but you could normally include smaller items in the largest container required for the order -- i.e., you'd normally ship an order for all-small items in a smaller box, but small items could go along with a larger item in its larger box -- then use our Tubes packaging types (even if you won't literally ship in actual tubes), as those can consolidate items to fill unused capacity in the largest Tube(s) required for each order.



The trouble you're seeing is probably happening because USPS and UPS provide no way to query for multi-parcel shipments of varying weights, so our live rate-lookups have to divide the total weight of the order by the number of separate parcels in the order, obtain a rate for that averaged parcel by itself, then remultiply that rate by the total number of parcels in the order. This usually works out fine, but it can sometimes produce peculiar results in fringe cases, such as orders combining items of widely-varying weights shipped in separate parcels. If your products are configured with a shipping Capacity of 1 and/or using different Packaging Types, we're querying for rates under the assumption that each item is being shipped in a separate parcel, rather than all being shipped together as a single parcel, and the (averaged parcel) X (# of parcels) is resulting in a higher rate than the sum of rates for each item queried separately.

[mkp007]

Perhaps a solution would be to add a check box in the Product definition (section where you define what size box you ship the item in) that says "allow this product to be shipped in larger packages".



Or, look up rates for each package and add them together rather than computing an average parcel.



both of these solutions are probably too hard to implement.



I'm pondering your comment "use our Tubes packaging types (even if you won't literally ship in actual tubes), as those can consolidate items to fill unused capacity in the largest Tube(s) required for each order."



Are you saying that tubes are treated differently then boxes? Small boxes can't fill larger boxes but small tubes can fill larger tubes? If this is the case then this would certainly help.

[E-junkie_Ninja]

I will pass the suggestion for adding in a check box in the product settings to "allow the product to be shipped in a large packages." to our development team.



As for the way we get shipping rates from USPS and UPS, the actual rates are calculated by the USPS and UPS servers and then they tell us the rate to use. Because of the way our system has to send data to them, we are not able to define the weight per package, just number of packages and total weight.



Finally, yes, if you are using the packaging option we have labeled as Tubes, a small tube can fit into a large tube. Unlike our boxes in which small boxes cannot be added to large boxes.

[mkp007]

"if you are using the packaging option we have labeled as Tubes, a small tube can fit into a large tube. Unlike our boxes in which small boxes cannot be added to large boxes."



You should add this note to the Seller Admin -> Shipping Settings under the "Define Packaging". Where else is this mentioned? Probably better to add a "Help" button to the page that covers all the quirks.



Does envelopes behave the same as boxes or tubes or do they behave differently?



thanks for the quick responses.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Only Tubes can consolidate items from smaller containers into larger ones with vacant capacity in the same order -- the original idea there being that, say, small posters that ship in a Small Tube can also fit in a Large Tube along with larger posters. For the other packaging types, only items configured to ship in the same packaging type can be consolidated to fill unused capacity in each others' packages. This and other aspects of shipping calculation are explained in more detail on our help page for Shipping settings:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.shipping.htm



From Seller Admin, you can always find the "help" link in blue under the Sellers tab at the top of our site; that leads to an index of all our help pages, explaining every feature and setting in detail. In the new HTML-based Seller Admin we've been working on, we'll be able to add a link on each settings screen directly to the help page for that particular feature.

[mkp007]

Mr. Guru, I believe your statement "only items configured to ship in the same packaging type can be consolidated to fill unused capacity in each others' packages" conflicts with Ninja's statement "small boxes cannot be added to large boxes". the way I understand it is that only "a small tube can fit into a large tube". So a small envelop can not filt in a larger envelop.



Thanks for the link and looking forward to the HTML version.

[moodykidtx]

A variation on this question-- I have multiple types of workbooks that can be purchased in any quantity. Thus, they can be shipped in small, medium or large envelopes or small, medium or large boxes, based on quantity. The more that are shipped, the lower the per item shipping cost. Is there any way to pass on these savings to customers (or conversely, not take a hit on low volume orders?) Thanks for any advice you can provide.

[E-junkie_Monster]

Hello,



There's several ways to do that, either by using packaging costs and setting high package capacities -- for example, a product with a packaging capacity of two applies the same packaging cost on orders of one or two items. You can use whatever form of packaging is most convenient for you in the real world and just use the packaging costs in our system as a way to charge X amount of dollars per each quantity of items.



Shipping rules are also a good way to do this since they can be set to apply by quantity in addition to the buyer's location. You could charge a set of flat rates that scale upwards according to the quantity of items ordered regardless of what kind of packaging you use.