Hi All,

We ship a lot of packages so we recieve considerable discounts from FedEx and UPS, but as a result of the discounts they do not allow us to purchase insurance on packages or file claims on damaged merchandise. This means that we have to "self-insure" our packages.

we would like to add an option at checkout where the customer can purchase shipping insurance on their package for an additional fee based on the dollar amount being purchased.

Sure, we could increase our shipping rates and factor in the insurance on all purchases, but we want to give the customer the option since they may not be purchasing a breakable item. This will also allow us to keep our shipping rates as low as possible.

Can anyone out there help with this? This would be a great feature for ProductCart and I suspect many other ProductCart users would like to implement this if it was available.

We sell a lot of stuff on eBay and you would be amazed at how many people opt to purchase insurance. It's a nice little "add-on" sale and it allows us to cease responsibility upon shipment if insurance was not purchased.

Thank you!

eBay IS the mail order industry & it HAS become custom.  Yes, it started on eBay...and how many Internet consumers have purchased on eBay?  Pretty much everyone. Optional shipping insurance is something that consumers have come to accept and perhaps even expect.

Please note that when YOU ship a package under $100 it is automatically insured up to $100. Any dollar amount over that requires additonal insurance.  In our case, we recieve volume discounts from Fed Ex (ie. we can ship a 10 lb package anywhere in the 48 states for less than $8 and if it's to a business address for $4 flat!) This is great, but the only catch is that Fed Ex doesn't insure us at all. Any breakage is solely our problem and we don't have the ability to file claims...no matter what!

Therefore we want to "self-insure" our packages and pass the cost on to the consumer. If they don't want insurance, that's fine...that's why it would be optional...just like on eBay). But if they want to buy insurance, we would replace any damaged items "no questions asked". No insurance? Too bad. Just like on eBay. This may seem foreign to many, but for the millions of eBay consumers this is pretty much the standard.

This doesn't apply to us, because we're not high-volume enough to have forfeited the automatic insurance with UPS.... but....

When we had our last pre-ProductCart cart, we were still shipping a lot of USPS, and asked about forcing the customer to opt in or out of insurance.  The developers coded a radio button on our checkout page, and the customer had to choose whether they wanted to forego insurance AT THEIR OWN RISK, or wanted the cart to add insurance (it showed a simple rate chart based on total order amount).  If they said "yes", it added a line item with the insurance charges to their cart.  In our case, it only applied to USPS orders... if they chose UPS as their shipping option, the insurance option wasn't shown.

Perhaps Early Impact could do something similar?

Brenda Sievers, Oak Court Creations

http://www.oakcourtcreations.com - www.oakcourtcreations.com