Shipping books & hard goods; want to use media mail for book only orders

[chriscavs]

Hi,



I'm pretty new to e-junkie, but I'm looking to do something pretty specific.



We are selling various items in our store, including hard copy books, clothing, and downloadable ebooks. We want to save shipping costs for our customers by using media mail ONLY when shipping the hard copy books. Is there a way to make a shipping rule that uses media mail for the hard copy books only?



To be clear, if someone is ordering, for example, a book AND a tshirt, we won't use media mail and will go to one of the other shipping methods. But if someone orders 1 or 2 hard copy books, we want to use media mail for the shipping method. Is that possible?



Thanks

[E-junkie_Guru]

We don't have a way to make shipping rules dependent on the presence or absence of any particular product in the cart; however, the shipping rate calculated in the cart need not dictate how you actually ship the order.



E.g., you could set up a rule using our USPS Cheapest calculator, which would compare First Class vs. Priority Mail and apply whichever rate is cheaper, but then you could actually ship the order via Media Mail if it qualifies.



Maybe in those cases if the difference is significant, you could refund the difference or just throw in a coupon code they could use for a discount on their next order:

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

[luckylily]

Please, E-Junkie, this is a HUGE problem in my store. We sell vinyl, CDs, posters, tshirts and hoodies. We really have to offer media mail because shipping costs are so high. Your solution is a band-aid that takes time and energy, is confusing to customers and creates extra work for us. I've put warnings on the site telling customers not to choose media mail when mixing orders, but they still do it, all the time. It's too confusing to have a cheaper alternative when they're staring at the cart.





-SFS

[chriscavs]

I understand that, but we stand to lose money if someone orders a book and 20 tshirts, then chooses media mail for shipping. That seems like a bad workaround.



Why, if we're paying money for your service, is this not a priority? Or is it on your todo list? Any info would be helpful.

[E-junkie_Guru]

What you describe is on our Development team's wishlist for consideration as a possible new feature; however, it would be rather complicated and tricky to implement, and there simply hasn't been much demand for that from the other 11,000 merchants using our service, so we can't promise when it may be implemented, if ever.



We place the utmost importance on maintaining bug-free stability and fool-proof simplicity for all merchants using our system. Development prioritizes new feature requests according to broadest potential benefit and the simplicity of programming them into our existing codebase and algorithms. Greater priority is given to popularly-requested features which many or most merchants could benefit from, and which can be written into our existing system fairly straightforwardly with minimal risk, whilst lower priority is given to features rarely requested and of benefit to fewer merchants, or which require substantial reprogramming or complexity that may introduce new bugs or instability problems in well-polished and stable parts of our existing system.

[tpirman]

We need this feature for our business, as well. I appreciate E-Junkie's development philosophy, but that doesn't make it any less of a pain in the butt. We sell books and other products, and we need to be able to offer media mail for book-only orders.