Shipping rules conflict with each other

[always_learning]

It appears as if the different shipping rules I need for different products, will conflict with each other. I cant solve it.



Let me give you specific details.



Item 75 I want to ship in the usa with free shipping only via usps priority mail which only costs me $4.90. I want the customer to be able to upgrade the shipping to express (within usa) as they then pay for shipping on its 14ozs in a flat rate envelope.



If Hawaii or Alaska or military shipping or anywhere else costs more, then I want the customer to pay for shipping. Any shipping cost above $4.90 I no longer want to pay out of my pocket, but then want the customer to pick up the shipping cost.



I then want to ship it internationally with calculated shipping costs to be paid by the buyer based on its go to location and weighs 14oz and will always fit within priority mail flat rate envelope, or via usps express flat rate envelope.





Then item 150 I want to ship in the usa only with free shipping, and do not want to sell or ship it internationally. Item 150 also weighs 14oz and will be shipped in a priority mail flat rate envelope. Item 150 can not be upgraded to express mail but always limited to priority mail.



So the rules I create to let item 75 ship internationally, seem to allow the customer to buy item 150 as they also want it shipped internationally against my wishes.



Also item 75 I dont know how to limit my out of pocket shipping cost to $4.90 when their location may exceed that cost as maybe Hawaii or other places. I am willing to pay the 1st $4.90, but no more out of my pocket. I dont care if they pay the difference above $4.90, or pay all the shipping cost when it cant be $4.90 or less.



I hate it that I cant just edit a shipping rule, but must delete it and then remember all the involved variables as I attempt to create the correct rule. You give my memory to much credit. Why cant i give a shipping rule my own chosen name so I can easily remember what it does and what product is made for?



I also wish I was able to create a rule that would not be global blanket coverage, but could be limited to a specific product only as no other product was allowed to use that rule. I want to be able to turn on or off any shipping rule on a per product basis. This would make my use of your service easy enough I could keep using your service. Ebay makes it so easy I dont need to read their help files. You make it so complex that after a day of reading your help files and dozens of experiments, I still can not figure it out on my own.



I wish when I create a buy button/product listing, I could choose which shipping rules it was governed under and which shipping rules that are not allowed to control that button/product.



I am still using your service on its free trial. Luckily I signed up when it was 90 days if I remember right. When I only sold item 75, I was able to make shipping rules that worked. Soon as I added item 150 to my sales line up, all shipping success went right out the window and I'm so lost.



I've played and played and experimented seeking the solution as I can nearly always figure something out with my sheer determination and refusal to turn away until I have success and have learned it. I am always self taught. But I have to admit this time, the lack of simplicity of your system, or its complexity do not allow me to learn my way through without help.



So although I hate to waste your time making you teach me something that should have been easy enough for me to figure out, go at it and teach me what to do to get the results that allow us to stay teamed up in the future.





Sincerely



Chris

[E-junkie_Monster]

Hi Chris,



Shipping rules apply across your entire account. They do not apply on a per-product basis, so anything you make for one product is going to carry over to every other product you sell as well. We're sorry for the frustration you've had so far but the reason you've not had success here is that you're trying to do things our system isn't designed to do.



If you want to have your shipping costs vary by item then the general idea is to use rates that vary by weight so that heavier products cost more, or to assign certain packages to certain products so that you can use packaging costs to add in additional costs.



It will not be possible to offer international shipping on one product without also offering it across the board, but you can limit the shipping destinations that your cart allows by selecting the countries you will ship to in the Shipping Destinations menu at Seller Admin > Edit E-junkie Cart Shipping Settings.



One thing you could do regarding the $4.90 rate that you wait to waive is to create an automatic shipping discount for that amount which can offset anything you program in as a shipping cost.



To create a discount like that, follow these steps:



- Go to Seller Admin > Add/Edit E-junkie Cart Discounts

- Create a new discount that is set to apply to "All Cart Items"

- Give the Discount a distinct Name, this is for internal tracking and needs to be different from any other discounts you have created so far

- Leave Discount Codes blank so that this applies automatically

- Leave all the qualifying conditions such as Expiration Date, Max Use etc blank

- Set the Amount to 4.90 Flat

- Set "Applies to" to "Shipping and Handling"

- Submit the discount



This will automatically waive 4.90 ONLY from your shipping costs, so anything under $4.90 would just stop at $0.00 shipping, it won't ever eat into your product prices.



That would allow you to create a shipping rule that pulls the USPS Priority cost for an order, which is calculated based on the weight of the product and the number of packages involved for an order if multiples are purchased. That would automatically scale up for expensive locations within the US if any destination costs more than another.

[always_learning]

Thanks for the response. I liked your idea about the shipping discount of 4.90 so usps lookup can raise its price above my free shipping threshold and then the customers pay all amounts above the $4.90.



So this is what I did.

- Go to Seller Admin > Add/Edit E-junkie Cart Discounts

- Create a new discount that is set to apply to "All Cart Items"

- Give the Discount a distinct Name, this is for internal tracking and needs to be different from any other discounts you have created so far

- Leave Discount Codes blank so that this applies automatically

- Leave all the qualifying conditions such as Expiration Date, Max Use etc blank

- Set the Amount to 4.90 Flat

- Set "Applies to" to "Shipping and Handling"



Soon as I set it to "Applies to" to "Shipping and Handling" The flat rate window instantly (grayed out) changed to "%" and the 4.90 window (grayed out) changed to "5" and the "shipping and handling" window also grayed out.







What am I missing?

[E-junkie_Monster]

Hmm, I just tested that and now it looks like shipping and handling discounts are locked to percentage rates rather than flat amounts. I'm not aware of any technical reason for that restriction so I will check with our development team to see why that is and if it can be lifted to allow for a $4.90 amount... although that would have to be part of our larger interface upgrade that we've been working on for some time now.



What are the rates that you normally get from the post office above $4.90 for priority mail? Does that ever come up for your product for any domestic locations? It may be easier to program your costs in with flat rates rather than using the calculator, that would allow you to charge a lower amount without setting up any discounts.



Sorry again for the frustration, it's just that the particular setup you are looking to create is very specific. Our shipping feature was designed to be very broad rather than specific so that it can be adapted to the widest possible set of conditions because we can't fully anticipate everyone's individual needs. But the more we know about the costs you want to create the more we can offer in terms of suggestions and instructions.



If you can let us know what you want to charge in the following conditions we can give you specific instructions on how to do that with shipping rules:



Item 75's cost for:

Domestic orders, priority shipping

Domestic orders, express shipping

International orders, priority shipping

International orders, express shipping



Item 150's cost for:

Domestic orders, priority shipping



Rather than using the USPS Priority or Express calculators we can create shipping rules that look at the weight of each item to determine which is which and apply the appropriate cost. This can work well when you are dealing with two groups of items, but it doesn't work well beyond that.

[always_learning]

I've read about... " our larger interface upgrade that we've been working on for some time now."



When is this upgrade expected to be released/usable? I am so looking forward to it, although I don't know if I can wait it out. Currently I only sell two items. To not be able to process either of them with your cart, means 50% of my income wont be there. I like all the rest of your service's cept the shipping restrictions.



But maybe we can MCgiver it to work.

So here is my nitty gritty details and you find me the magical solution.



Both items I sell are exactly the same. Its a small metal adapter 14oz. It always fits in a flat rate priority mail envelope or flat rate express mail envelope. Since the priority mail cost is only $4.90 I happily give that away as free shipping.



My motto I advertise everywhere is $75 with free priority shipping inside the domestic usa. So I call it item 75 for the purpose of cart button identification. Rumor has it that Alaska and Hawaii charge more. If a customer wants it shipped there, I want them to pay the difference above my 4.90 included free ship. But i dont know what to expect that difference to be as I've never sold there yet. Priority mail typically takes 3-5 days to get it anywhere in the USA.



If 3-5 days is not fast enough for the customer, I want to allow them to be able to upgrade the shipping speed from priority mail to express mail (also flat rate envelope in the usa). Then they get it in 1-2 days anywhere in the usa. That cost is $18- so I want the customer to pay the 13 extra, or pay all 18. So far its all easy.



I only use usps as my carrier. They go international so my item 75 can go international. International priority mail envelope is $28 to most locations, and international express mail envelope is $48 to most locations. I say to most locations because depending on where its going to, in some instances it can jump to $68. International is NOT guaranteed flat rate any more, though in most instances it actually works out to be so. Since international shipping cost can vary so much, I always want usps to calculate it for me depending on where its going to, and add that postage onto the purchase.



While my concern is the postage jump cost, I dont know which of the 140 countries are the problems so I can not knowingly exclude them by choosing which to include. Also usps may not deliver to every country in the world. So to protect myself from the surprise postage jumps, and to not allow a sale to a country usps wont deliver to, I always use usps calculated postage for all international shipping. So far I have not been bitten.



Ok, product #2. From my end it is still item 75 but with a twist. I buy a wagon from another distributor and include the wagon as a package deal with my metal adapter. The wagon distributor will drop ship the wagon with free postage to me, to the buying customer anywhere in the domestic usa.



Now I charge my buying customer $150 for this package deal so I call this package sale item 150. The wagon is huge and can NOT go international. Wagon shipment is free. My adapter must also be shipped but since its always only in the usa, my priority mail cost remains at $4.90 and I'm happy to give the customer free shipping on the $150- sale. With my amazon prime shipping membership, the wagon always arrives in only two days. My metal adapter will take 3-5 days when I give free shipping as I'm willing to pay the 4.90-



If I have to, I can live informing the customer 3-5 day with free shipping is the only option for item 150. If possible I would like to offer that free 3-5 day shipping, and the ability for the customer to upgrade it to 2 day shipping as my adapter then gets thrown in an express envelope for $18- additional. Since I'm paying the 1st $5- $13- additional. Since item 150 cant go international, I should never have any surprises.



I do not want to allow the customer to buy item 150 unless its ONLY being shipped in the domestic usa.



Maybe I could have shortened my explanation a bit, but I was scared I would leave out some pertinent detail that would ultimately effect the magic brew you will make for me.



My website is live, waiting for me to flip the switch to begin google addwords. I cant figure out how to make these shipping possibilities all work with your global shipping rules. When your redevelopment is done, I hope to take a product and create a shipping rule specific to that product only. Then my buttons would have been functioning a week ago and you wouldn't have to hold my hand and walk me across these magic invisible stones.



Ok, I'm ready. Stir up your magic potion and tell me with precision how to make the impossible happen.



Sincerely

Chris

[always_learning]

Ps. I never have multiple items in a shopping cart. They buy either item 75 or item 150. So far. I hope to be proven wrong someday, but I doubt it will happen.

[E-junkie_Monster]

In situations where you know the rate will vary based on their destination I would recommend charging an average cost that will cover you in the long run even though in some cases you may be over or under by a small amount.



Fortunately it will be possible to make some rules that end up applying to one or the other of your products so that you can basically get these costs without actually querying the post office's site. Here's the basics on what you will need to do.



First you will need to assign an arbitrary weight to each of your two products which we can use to tell which one is which. Set the weight for Item 75 to 0 and the weight for Item 150 to 150.



Once that is done, go to Seller Admin > Edit E-junkie Cart Shipping Settings and press Next to reach your Shipping Rule Screen.



For your first shipping rule for Item 75, Domestic Priority for free, use these settings and ignore any that aren't mentioned:

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: 0.00

Shipping Method Description: Priority

Country: United States

Min Weight: 0

Max Weight: 149



For Express shipping on Item 75 within the US, use these settings:

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: 18.00 (or 13.00 instead if you wish)

Shipping Method Description: Express

Country: United States

Min Weight: 0

Max Weight: 149



These two rules will offer the buyer a choice between $0 or your express cost when they are in the United States and only when they are ordering Item 75 (since item 150 has been set to be over this weight value).



For International orders use the same approach in your settings. Enter whatever rates you like as the flat rate to charge and you don't need to offer express on international orders if you don't want to get caught by an expensive destination. As an example, here's two rules which will do priority and express:



Priority International -

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: 28.00

Shipping Method Description: Priority

Country: All Countries (which works out as "All Countries Except the US" because of the rules above)

Min Weight: 0

Max Weight: 149



If you want an Express option -

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: your call, 50.00 might strike a good balance between the rates you expect

Shipping Method Description: Priority

Country: All Countries

Min Weight: 0

Max Weight: 149



These rules will only work on Item 75 outside the US, they will not allow international shipping on Item 150.



Item 150 itself only needs one rule if you just want free domestic shipping, use these settings:

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: 0.00

Shipping Method Description: Priority

Country: United States

Min Weight: 150

Max Weight: 0



This last rule will give free shipping on an order of Item 150 in the United States. It will even work if someone buys Item 75 and 150 together for some reason. The important thing is NOT to make an International rule that applies to weight values of 150 or more. That means if anyone tries to order Item 150 outside of the United States they will get an error message that prevents them from checking out, and this error will only apply on orders that include one or more units of Item 150. It will never limit orders of Item 75, no matter how many are ordered.



You can check with the post office to confirm whether or not your shipping for orders to Alaska and Hawaii will involve a greater cost, if so it would be possible to add in new rules which refer to those states specifically and it will not be necessary to delete any of the ones above when you do that.

[always_learning]

Thank you for the help. Your work around solution has me up and running.

Your tech support is great.



But please upgrade your programing on how we can set shipping rules.



Here is what we really want...



E-junkieGuru said "Shipping Rules are designed to work as part of an overall shipping calculation strategy and thus only apply to the buyer's entire cart"



Why such a strict limitation?



Wouldn't you rather say "E-junkie is designed to obtain and retain new users/subscribers via its easy to use highly flexible, fast to learn shipping rule creation abilities?"



I also want the ability to either use global shipping rules, or create a rule that can be locked to a single product as its locked out of being used on other products, or may be reused on other products if I so choose to allow.



I want the ability to determine on a product by product basis, which rule(s) that product is or is not allowed to use.



When we have a product its easy for us to know which rule we want to apply to that specific product. This does NOT require us to become an expert. But in order to have to learn all the global shipping options, possibilities and variables, requires us to have to be an expert in many cases so we can get the results we need to obtain. We don't all have the time for that learning curve.



Another problem with forcing us to use global rules only, is soon as we mess up, that mistake can instantly spill over and apply to many products simultaneously. Now while we are trying to learn one variable for one specific product, we have messed up the shipping costs across many products making our learning curve way too expensive.



Fine, let me make a mistake while learning, but let that mistake apply only to one product I am playing with at the moment. Dont force one mistake to be able and capable of messing up the shipping costs across many products. Thats ridiculous. But thats what your forcing upon us.



Please re-develop and change how products use shipping rules instead of ONLY how shipping rules apply globally to our products.



Being able to use global rules can be very good. Not allowing a single product to escape the umbrella coverage of global rules is VERY BAD.



Please change and do it very soon while I am still a subscriber of yours. You will do neither of us any favor if you change after I have switched cart companies.



The rest of your service is easy enough for us to quickly learn and use. So why continue keeping one single aspect of your service as such a nightmare that it chases us away from the rest of your service?



Additionally we need the ability on a product specific basis to choose shipping locations that product is NOT allowed to be shipped to. We need to be able to create exclusion rules. Not everything can go to the same locations others are allowed to travel to. Because one item can NOT go there does not mean we want to restrict the rest of our line up from also going there. Inversely because some items are allowed to go there does NOT mean we want to allow all our items to be allowed to ship there.



PLEASE.

This is just some feedback. Thanks for the help.

[macsolvers]

I sell two products: one is sold to all countries and the other I process manually on a case-by-case basis because I restrict sales to only U.S. locations. Given the way E-Junkie is programmed to work, I am unable to limit a product's availability based on the customer's shipping address. That is, ProductA that I sell to all countries works fine but I can't set up ProductB to be restricted only to U.S. destinations because of the global shipping rule. If I am amiss in my assessment, please direct me to where I need to go. Thanks!

[E-junkie_Guru]

If you are not using weight-based shipping calculation methods (USPS/UPS rate lookups or "Price per unit weight"), you can define ProductB with an absurdly-high Weight like 1000 ounces, then set up some shipping rules with Max. Weight = 999 to cover orders without ProductB, and other rules with Min. Weight = 1000 to cover orders with ProductB.



If you set up your rule(s) with Min. Weight = 1000 to also require Country: United States, and your other rule(s) have Max. Weight = 999, buyers with ProductB in their cart will be unable to checkout unless they select United States as their shipping country.



You may wish to add notation somewhere informing buyers that ProductB is US-only -- e.g., by adding "(U.S. only)" to the product's Item Name (which appears in the cart), or by adding the following lines to your View Cart code in every page, just before the "// -->" line in your standard View Cart code, which will display a custom message next to the checkout buttons in your cart:



function EJEJC_config() {

EJEJC_POSTCALL=true;

}

function EJEJC_shown() {

jQuery("#tdPmnt").attr("innerHTML",

"<b>NOTE:</b> ProductB can only be shipped to the USA.");

}

[macsolvers]

Thanks, Guru, for the tip. I modified the product info to reflect the minimum weight requirement for ProductB which I restricted for sale to US customers. You can see what I've done on my store page.



http://www.organicsulfur4health.com/store/