Trying to find a solution for accuratley determining shipping costs with FedEx in Canada as it doesn't work now and ProductCart seems to have no intention of addressing the issue. The problem I have with the custom shipping
options in ProductCart is that they completely ignore locations in determining
shipping costs. The returned rate for shipping a product down the street would
be the same as shipping it to the Arctic Circle. You can enter any address in
the “estimate shipping charges” and you get the same result ( you don't even have to enter an address you can enter anything. Once a customer
pays for an order it’s not pleasant to go back and tell them shipping will be 2
-5 times the amount indicated and already paid for even if you have all kinds of disclaimers. Getting pre-authorizations
on the credit card and then having to figure out the exact shipping, then manually processing the
credit card transaction seems to defeat the purpose of a shopping cart.
For FedEx at least, Canada is divided up
into 6 pricing Zones based on postal code ranges in each province. Some zones have
a higher shipping rate than others so there is a chart with rates ranging from
1-150 lbs. and a different rate per lb.
for each of the 6 zones. The first 3 letters of a postal code determines which
rate zone to apply. For example, Postal codes starting with B0A – BOE indicate Zone 6 so if the
package weighs 5 lbs then column 6 is referenced 5 rows down to the correct
shipping charge. So the postal code the customer enters for shipping needs to
be captured.
The database for the rates would have 150
rows and 7 or 8 columns,
There are a few other variables,
All weights are dimensional (The product’s
dimensions are used to determine this, something like L X W XH divided by 66) If there is more than 1 package then each
package needs to be calculated and the total combined Some postal code ranges have a delivery surcharge Residential deliveries have a set
additional charge of 2.75 (there is
already an area in ProductCart that is set up to indicate commercial or
residential).
Is this something that would be ridiculously expensive to do ?
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