[ECP Computers More]

I have been working with shipping and found that because there are no package dimensions that our shipping has been as much as 75% off the actual costs to ship.

In order to fix this issue, I had to add a flat rate to each individual item to offset the difference in real costs and calculated costs. Ok that works well, not exactly ideal - because it would be better to apply it directly to the Carrier instead of individual items.

Now the problem is that the local pick-up option now shows the flat rate costs, when it shouldn't be added in at all.

I can't find any way to get this to work correctly and believe that ECWID needs a flat rate applied only to the carrier, as well as package dimensions - because ECWID offers shipping options that aren't even available for large packages. So the shipping is all messed up, it calculates incorrectly, offers services not available, and then adds the flat rate to a local pick up - all WRONG.

Is there any way to fix any of these problems?>

Thanks in advance

[ECP Computers More]

To try and fix this I put in flat rate fee for all small items, however now instead of saying shipping is a flat rate fee I set it for, it shows all global options and then gives the price of the flat rate fee instead of the calculated carrier costs.
This obviously defeats the entire purpose of adding a flat rate fee if they can choose a more expensive option for the same costs - how do you set up a flat rate fee so it doesn't show anything from the global settings at all?


ECWID has been a great shopping cart so far, but the shipping options are horrendous at best. A simple package size that affects the calculated costs would eliminate all these issues we are having.

[Eugene Rimmer]

Can you please explain how it should be calculated then? If you need flat rate added to the calculated rated, then you need to select exactly that option from the Shipping freight dropdown in the Tax and Shipping tab of your products in Ecwid control panel.

[ECP Computers More]

Yes that works fine except it adds this flat rate price to our local pick up - which should be free.

Trying to add the flat rate to only the carrier calculated rates, so we can manually adjust these to represent the actual shipping costs. Without adding this flat rate costs to the local pick up option.

As far as the flat rate fee, the problem with just going for a flat rate for each item is that it calculates that flat rate for all shipping options i.e. overnight, next day, ground - so we would have to remove the carrier calculated shipping costs to do this and then we would have to manually calculate shipping for all items.

The main issue we are having is that we ship items that are large and there is no way to define the package type or size in ECWID that I can see. This throws off the carrier calculations and is the reason we are manually trying to adjust each item to get the correct shipping.

Thanks!

[Makfruit]

Hi,

Indeed, product dimensions could be crucial for carrier-calculated shipping rates. As far as we know, it is especially important when using UPS-provided shipping methods. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to specify the product dimensions in Ecwid, sorry. But we understand the troubles Ecwid users may have due to the absence of product dimensions controls, so we will certainly add them in one of the future Ecwid versions. There is a related suggestion in our ideas base:
http://ideas.ecwid.com/forums/22031-...
Please vote for it and we will notify you when it's ready.

Meanwhile, there are two workarounds for this situation: using an additional per-product fixed shipping charges or setting a bigger weight for the oversized products. Please refer to this post for the details:
http://www.ecwid.com/forums/showthread.php?p=48332

I understand that the both workarounds have some drawbacks though. In your case, as far as I can see, the fixed per-product rates don't meet your requirements because they apply regardless of the selected shipping method so that even a free local pickup shipping could become non-free for some items in your store. Well, that is why they are called 'fixed' - they are often used when a special charge is required for some item in the cart, for example, if the shipping cost should include a special packing price for the product.

What do you think about the second solution (increasing the weight of some products to compensate for their shipping charge)? Does it suit you?