Customizing ProductCart - Wholesale Shipping

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Wholesale Shipping

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Customizing ProductCart
Forum Description: Exchange messages with other users that are customizing ProductCart.
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=5460
Printed Date: 06-July-2025 at 12:15am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Wholesale Shipping

Posted By: GreggS
Subject: Wholesale Shipping
Date Posted: 23-January-2013 at 1:52pm

We are in the process of switching our wholesale accounts over. The problem we are running into mainly has to do with shipping. We currently have free shipping on orders over $149. On our old site, wholesale accounts had to pay shipping for every order. With our new PC site, free shipping kicks in for any order over $149 including wholesale accounts. Is there a way to have it so free shipping doesn't apply to wholesale accounts?

We are able to have a category show up for wholesale customers and not retail customers.
We are able to configure wholesale prices that retail customers can't see.
BTO package deals won't be available to wholesale customers and we are able to configure the regular prices so they won't go through BTO.

One workaround we were working on is to raise prices to factor in shipping costs but if it were possible to deactivate free shipping for wholesale accounts that would be a lot better.

Replies:

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 23-January-2013 at 2:29pm

Hi Gregg,

One way to work this would be to not configure the free shipping in the shipping options, but to do it as an automatically applied discount. Discounts can be restricted by customer type.

Posted By: Wonderfulnews
Date Posted: 23-January-2013 at 6:17pm

Bingo - thats what we do.

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 26-January-2013 at 2:43am

Hi Gregg,

Mind sharing with the community here if this solution worked for you needs?

Posted By: GreggS
Date Posted: 28-January-2013 at 1:44pm

I ran this by my boss. He had a few issues with it. The main issue was that customers won't see the free shipping until the very end of checkout. If a customer is going through the checkout process there are 2 spots customers would have to ignore.

The 1st spot is the estimated shipping charges on the view cart screen. If the order qualifies for free shipping, that won't show up there. The 2nd spot which is huge is at the shipping method screen. Once customers see shipping charges, they will abandon the cart. We can make a whole page detailing how free shipping will work which customer won't read. We can even put a message on the shipping method screen telling customers that shipping will come off on the very next screen and still customers won't read that.

Example: We just updated free shipping on orders over $49 ($149 previously). We set a parameter for $49-$149 because we are going to add USPS and FedEx in the future. The http://www.1st-line.com/store/pc/catalog/misc/screenshot-estimated-shipping.jpg" rel="nofollow - estimated charges popup on the view cart screen, UPS shows up 1st and other shipping options shows 2nd. Customers see that and wonder where the free shipping is. The http://www.1st-line.com/store/pc/catalog/misc/screenshot-shipping.jpg" rel="nofollow - shipping method screen , UPS shows up by default. Even with the message above it, we had orders eligible for free shipping, but customers didn't select the free option. Most figured it out how to get free shipping (meaning they read), but there a few that jumped ship when they saw shipping charges. The proof is in the incomplete orders.

Currently, we put on hold setting up wholesale accounts and have them ordering on our old site.

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 28-January-2013 at 8:35pm

Hi Gregg,

I see a number of issues here in your last post, not the least of which is my old adage that when folks open a browser, their brain shuts off ... and I'm one of the worst offenders, LOL. That is, I don't care if you put something in bold, all caps red font, folks still won't read (I know this because I've don't it as a customer).

So, UI's, esp. in ecom, really have to do everything possible to rule out the need for any thinking or reading as that can be catastrophic to require anything as complicated as that (I'm overstating a bit for dramatic effect, but not too much, right?).

Part of this we've got solved for you, though not released yet. We have a solid working beta live on a site where we apply discount codes (automatic or otherwise) on the viewcart.asp/order summary page before checkout. The discounts applied there carry over automatically to the One Page Checkout. If this is a free shipping discount applied, then that shows in the shipping option (rather than waiting for it to apply further down the process).

The other bit, about the order in which the shipping option tabs display in either the estimator and/or the checkout funnel I'm sure we could solve pretty easily -- though I'm sure there's some UPS issue with their rules about how shipping rates can be displayed if UPS is an option (they are over the top with this stuff IMHO).

With these enhancements in place, I believe you can overcome your bosses legitimate issues with falling back on using discount codes for free shipping to handle the retail vs. wholesale customer shipping issue.

Posted By: GreggS
Date Posted: 30-January-2013 at 2:57pm

I just figured out how to get Other Shipping Options to show up before UPS. Its actually a setting.

Shipping-->Shipping Settings-->Other Settings

And here I was thinking we would have to into the code and move something above some other thing.

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 30-January-2013 at 9:24pm

Hi Gregg,

Let us know if you see a reduction in customers not selecting the free shipping option when they qualify for it having changed the order of the tabs.

That should probably help.

What Kelly and I were thinking to do was to detect if there is a free shipping option available, and then display that above the tabs -- so probably no one could miss it.