Shipping Options set up very complex/impossible?

[roo]

Been trying to get my head around this all week, when time allowed. My conclusions are that the program for tangible goods is almost impossible to use outside of the USA.



The inability to add a correct postcode to the shipping set up options, other than a US zipcode seems to be the first major stumbling block. Is there a correct way around this problem?



The features to pull prices right from USPS and other US couriers might be quite neat, if you are in the USA that is. Otherwise it's useless.



What I'm trying to do is ship a single product from the UK, with 3 flat rates for dispatch depending on destination. UK £2.75, Europe £4.75, Rest of World £7.75 I set up a couple of options to try and test, but can't get past an error in cart when testing it won;t let me add to cart, just states shipping error.





And am getting daily emails from google - We've made several unsuccessful attempts to send order notifications to your notification callback URL, https://www.e-junkie.com/gc/(coderemoved)/ResponseHandler.php As a result, you aren't receiving order status, risk or other notifications. - I removed the code whilst posting link here.





Am really regretting not having got on the case earlier this week, to take advantage of the free trial period to sort out these issues, but got hit by storms and had to spend time repairing the roof!



Any guidance on this would be appreciated!

[E-junkie_Guru]

I've extended your free demo period for another week to accommodate your circumstances. :^)



The ZIP/postal code setting in Seller Admin is only relevant to US-based sellers for now, as we can currently only perform live rate lookups for US shipping origins (we are planning to add other rate lookups in the future). Unfortunately, that postcode field was made required for all merchants (oops, we'll be fixing that soon), so those outside the US can simply enter any 5-digit number to satisfy the field, which won't actually affect anything else.



To set up your flat-rate zones, go into Seller Admin > Cart Shipping Settings and click Next to reach the Shipping Rules screen, where you would need to add 3 Shipping Rules, all using the Flat calculation method: one for All Countries (=rest of world), one for the UK, and one for each European country in your middle zone. If you have any other Existing Shipping Rules in the menu on that screen, you should select and Delete those.



Regarding your Google Checkout issue, please double-check every step of our GC integration procedure to confirm you haven't overlooked any requirements:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/google-checkout-shopping-cart.htm#help



Note in particular: the API Callback Method should be XML, and there should be nothing checked under Advanced Settings there.

[roo]

Thanks for the pretty swift response seeing as it's a weekend! Hope y'all had a good thanksgiving, as just realised it's this weekend!



I checked the google set up numerous times now, following instructions slavishly and as you can see by the screenshot here http://twitpic.com/rjhrz



I'll try run thru the shipping options again, though it's a bit of a pain to have to select every country in europe as an option, instead of just a generic europe option which would encompass the continent. Here in UK prices for shipping across europe are the same no matter which country. Guess the long way is the only way though!



It's late here, so will check back tomorrow and let you know how I got on.



Thanks also for extending the trial, much appreciated

[roo]

OK, can I ask for some clarification here?

I'm at this stage - "add 3 Shipping Rules, all using the Flat calculation method: one for All Countries (=rest of world), one for the UK, and one for each European country in your middle zone."



first 2 seem easy enough. tho am confused as to instructions for 3rd 'zone' as you state 3 rules, but the inability to select multiple country's from the drop down list on this page make it impossible to do this with just 3 rules, as it seems you have to set up a new rule for each and every country Europe! Am I correct in assuming this, or is their a method of multiple selecting destinations on this screen?

[roo]

well, have now managed to get it live after a quick test. Though having to set up 60+ shipping rules for european countries I must say was quite a pain.



Now just gotta sit back and watch orders come in.... had 50 in the last 24hours, so be interesting to see if this number increases or not with the new ejunkie shopping cart!

[roo]

Thumbs up so far! have had orders via both paypal and google checkout so far, processing normally and email advices from both. The google notification did take almost 30mins to come thru, seems there was a delay in the authorization process.



Though am hoping this was unconnected with the earlier 'api callback' issues. Will let you know if further emails arrive from google about this, though I'd say that this may have been caused by us having set up the callback before we were using the cart, so orders that did not go through the ejunkie cart were sending an erroneous callback message to trigger this alert from google.

[E-junkie_Guru]

If you are seeing transactions from Google Checkout in your E-junkie Seller Admin > Transaction Log, that indicates your GC integration with us is set up correctly. If you are selling tangible goods (those with Shipping/Buyer's Address enabled), those orders are subject to a 15 minute "cancellation grace period" delay at GC's end:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/faq.google-checkout.delay.htm



Ah yes, if you were taking orders via GC without using E-junkie buttons to initiate the sale, then the callbacks to us for those sales would have failed, so that probably explains the alerts you received.



Apologies for any confusion regarding the "3rd" shipping rule; I really meant you'd need to add a series of identical rules, one for each country in your Euro zone. We wish there was a way we could support a Rule for Europe (or even the EU specifically), but unfortunately that is simply just wildly impractical to even contemplate programming into our existing system in practice.

[secretpoliceman]

I had the exact same problem as Roo, and Tyson posted the solution at the end of the following thread: http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3521



It was a bit confusing at first, but I did eventually manage to get it to work by following his advice.



Basically I had to set up one rule for each EU country (The UK one was set to multiply by 1, and then all the other countries had to multiply by the amount needed to calculate the EU shipping cost), and then a single rule for all other countries.



So I didn't have to set up 60+ shipping rules.



Roo - have a look at Tyson's solution - hopefully that will solve your shipping charges problem.

[E-junkie_Guru]

SecretPoliceManBasically I had to set up one rule for each EU country (The UK one was set to multiply by 1, and then all the other countries had to multiply by the amount needed to calculate the EU shipping cost), and then a single rule for all other countries.



So I didn't have to set up 60+ shipping rules.

Right, that's what I meant to communicate here. You don't need to add a Rule for every single country in the world that you will ship to. You only need to add a Rule for your own country, another one for "All Countries" (i.e. "rest of the world" = any country that doesn't have any Rule(s) of its own), and one for each "exception" country that is neither Domestic nor Rest of World.



You can also limit which countries you are willing to ship to at all -- just select these in the Shipping Destinations list on the first Cart Shipping Settings screen. In this case, only the countries you select as valid Destinations would count as All Countries ("Rest of World") for your Shipping Rules.

[roo]

Yup, that's about it, though their may only be 27 countries in the economic state known as the EU to set a custom rule for, but for UK delivery purposes using Royal Mail there are actually 60+ countries classed as Europe.



Anyway, issue resolved, until it comes to adding further tangible goods that require european shipping at the correcxt rate rather than rest of world rate, those shipping from the UK may really want a simple singular option of selecting either eu or/and europe from the list to save a lot of time and effort setting up the shipping options/prices.