fizzbang

Dude if it helps, two things: - All carts are doing the same stupid thing, it's not just you. Could one of you companies just be original though, please? If you're going to be original about one thing, it should be shipping (original? l mean just copy how eBay does it) - It no longer matters, l have actually gone crazy. All these different shopping carts have broken me. 🙂 😞 I just wanted to post some stuff. Gosh.

But you know what i mean by policy. A plan to kick in when customer wants product in own house. No longer in your house. It now is in customer's house. To get there, you got policy. Cart looks at policy, gives customer options.

Tell me something. How do l create a policy for Republic of Ireland <1kg? Without actually indexing it to weight - l assign it manually to a product. I just know it's for <1kg because in my nickname for it, l called it "Cheap non-fragile stuff, <1kg" How do l offer 2 different couriers to Republic of Ireland for the <1kg policy? Would l THEN be able to create a separate policy for <2kg EXPENSIVE stuff, where l have 2 different carriers for Ireland? This is what l'm doing: Carriers ---> Add new carrier --> Call it ABC (but i better be careful cos the customer will see that) --> Transit time (l say 3-5 days, there's no way on earth an extension for calculating due date will be able to read "3-5 days" - this shouldn't be prose, it should be done via direct input boxes, min value = 3, max value = 5) --> Speed grade (this is the point where i realise i'm going crazy. It's okay when i'm full on crazy, i no longer mind this. In this box, you enter your favourite number 🙂 ) --> Logo (yes that makes everying alright) ---> Tracking URL (ok l'll admit this is a good feature) Next Select a continent. Why you wanna select a country? No you select a continent, be a man! Next, entire business plan falls to pieces. Next, click localization. Next click zones OK l thought l already had ABC but anyway i create zone ABC Next Realise this does absolutely nothing. Business plan really has fallen to pieces because real men do not post things. Real men are professionals. Why you wanna sell things if you are a pro? A pro does not sell things! These beautiful instruments, you wanna sell them? Post them to another country? No you cannot.

Dude l'm sorry but this means generalised policies and therefore "safe" high postage costs. A vendor might index their prices to eBay, to keep a competitive edge (the shopping cart price = eBay Price MINUS eBay Fees MINUS PayPal fees PLUS [for example] STRIPE FEES) If your shopping cart cannot allow the same geographical location in different policies, or if your shopping cart cannot allow different policies mixed together (we don't all sell Apple iPods, some ppl sell antique telescope, new doll, old army hat, 20kg lawnmower, all in one shop!), then you reject us that sell anything and everything to everywhere with a choice of different couriers. It's not just you, it's all open source carts. Also l believe closed source carts that l've looked at too. None of you guys think hard enough about shipping. Your solution: "Mark products up by £1 million + Offer free global shipping!" At checkout, customer does quick last minute price comparison. Sees eBay price. Cart is abandoned. No worries, cart abandonment plugin can harrass customer. Customer will bookmark yourshop and change bookmark name to "The shop that harrasses me, avoid" so if he sees your shop again, he'll see it's bookmarked and see the title he gave it. What l'm proposing is so, so, so simple. Just do it like eBay. eBay method: Create policy with private nickname. Allow multiple individual countries. All entire continents. All from same window. Also allow option for outlying areas. State cost for 1 item. State cost for multiple items. Allow whatever courier you want to whatever country, all under same policy. Also, allow duplicates of that policy, to give slight variations. Must give different nickname. What you are doing is: - Forcing customer to see policy nickname because that's all they see (l think) - Not allowing vendor to use policy nickname in any effective way - CRUCIALLY: Not having an ENTIRE policy covering the entire world, with separate parts e.g. for local country, EU 1, EU 2, Rest of Europe 1, Rest of Europe 2, Asia (excluding Japan), Japan, Oceania (excluding Australia), Australia, N&S America all under ONE policy. Cart shouldn't need to calculate weight because 1 kg of feathers is way diff. to 1kg gold. Cart no longer needs to max out CPU of anybody. I know you can have other options not indexed by weight but they really don't make the slightest bit of sense to me. All the cart should do is: Check buyer's country. Check policy. GIVE: All relevant courier deals for that country, for that policy. - Also you don't allow people to upload all this courier info via CSV My solution is a simple lookup operation that is quite easily done on a spreadsheet: Check buyer's country. Check policy. GIVE: All relevant courier deals for that country, for that policy. If it's easy on a spreadsheet, then surely it's easy if you code it into your software? Also if you could then make the courier policies (e.g. 60 policies altogether) uploadable in CSV, people could trade in spreadsheets, sell them to each other. So simple, so elegant, but instead all carts copy each other and make it hard and force vendors to MARK UP when the point of a shop is to MARK DOWN from eBay.

I want to send wedding rings weighing <100g worth £500: To UK for £8 via Royal Mail 1pm Special Delivery To Ireland for £13 Royal Mail Express To the rest of the EU for £15 via Royal Mail Express To Asia for £24 via UPS Standard To Asia for £32 via UPS Express To North & South America for £20 via Royal Mail International Standard To Oceania for £26 via Royal Mail International Standard [I CALL THIS "ABCD Policy <100g EXPENSIVE" - but only l can see it called that, customer doesn't see nickname] I want to send CDs <100g worth £5: To UK for £3.50 via Royal Mail 2nd Class Recorded Delivery To UK for £5 via Royal Mail 1st Class Recorded Delivery To Ireland for £8 Royal Mail Express To the rest of the EU for £9 via Royal Mail Express To Asia for £16 via UPS Standard To Asia for £19 via UPS Express To North & South America for £15 via Royal Mail International Standard To Oceania for £21 via Royal Mail International Standard [I CALL THIS "XYZ Policy <100g Cheap Stuff" - but only l can see it called that, customer doesn't see nickname] Take product called "Smash Hits 23 Double CD" I want to assign "XYZ Policy <100g Cheap Stuff" as shipping policy. Take product called "24k Diamond Eternity Ring" I want to assign "ABCD Policy <100g EXPENSIVE" as shipping policy. Lucky day: One customer buys both Smash Hits 23 Double CD *and* 24k Diamnd Eternity Ring. At checkout l want rule: Buy more than 1 item, cheapest item is 8% off total cost inc P&P Then l decide to just bundle the CD with the diamond ring and send it all via Royal Mail Special Delivery 1pm to UK - it weighs 160g but that's okay, customer has paid shipping for both items and only got a small discount off the cheapest item, l can still afford to send both items together via the Special Delivery 1pm tariff. If it is NOT okay, Iduplicate the shipping policy used, and make an updated price that works better for, say, diamond rings. Then l email customer telling him there was a problem with the shipping policy, cancel his order, and tell him to order again, with my updated policy. ^^^^^^ datakick, please tell me, is this possible? Because l gave it a long hard try and it just didn't seem possible. The tiny screenshot you sent me was nice but l've no idea how to get to that stage.

Regarding the rest of my OP, how do you assign courier policy to inventory item? I want to assign on the basis of predefined policy, not item weight etc. Just a policy l have already decided in advance, from a kitbag of pre-written policies. Sorry but i've uninstalled thirtybees for now owing to some quite bad attitude received on another thread and therefore l can no longer see if it's possible or not. Would be tempted to reinstall if l can get a straight answer. All l seem to get is "it's possible, but why should i tell you?"

There doesn't seem to be a template csv for uploading courier policies in bulk. I am informed there is a way to do it, but that is all l've been told. Does anybody know how? Also is there a way to manually assign a specific courier policy to a specific item via a bulk iitem inventory upload spreadsheet? I see no column for courier in the products import csv. I don't want the cart to calculate anything, other than matching buyer's country to what the designated policy has to offer for that country. Buyer pays item + predefined postage & packing fee for that shipping policy for that country for that tariff. Seller then shops around for the best current deal using buyer's money OR seller goes with the courier policy's nickname that only the seller can see, where it instructs seller to "Try PostCo Express Global or other Express Courier" [all the buyer will see is "Express Global Courier (7-10 Days) - inc. Basic Insurance"]

Hi there okay i think ur confusing software with your own person. I got like that playing Dink Smallwood on Debian so l know where ur coming from but still, it's not correct to do so. I'll address the rest of your post anyhow but please bear in mind l'm not a coder. Life's hard enough buying and selling. Maybe you are able to do all these things: "You can use any label you want, even "angsty" if that's what floats your boat. It's an ENUM type and the options are listed in the `condition` column of the `product` table." Alright l really didn't know that. It's a good idea. "Nothing is forced, you can show or hide that field and any other field. There are also two product code fields, `reference` and `supplier_reference`. You can use `reference` for customer viewing and `supplier_reference` for your own viewing. Best of both worlds." Nice one. I didn't notice that field. There's no explanation with the upload spreadsheet. TB includes a very functional API. You can use it to upload any collection of carrier definitions that you wish. Personally I have nearly 300 different carriers defined on my site, multiple carriers defined for every country. Functional APIs are quite rare in open source shopping carts and the one included with TB is what first attracted me to PS 1.6 and then later TB. Going back to my question thoguh: I don't see how this can be done, sir. I'm not a coder if that helps. There's no courier template spreadsheet on offer. What you really want to do is limit carrier availability based on the total value of the items in the shopping cart, not based on the price of any individual items. If someone buys $1000 worth of cheap widgets or a single piece of jewelry for $1000 you are going to want to send that order with good shipping, tracking, and insurance. TB does not include functionality that does this, and I have not seen any other shopping cart (open source or very expensive) that does this properly. Dude, no, you misunderstand my entire post. $1000 ring vs. $1000 for 10,000pcs widgets is easy peasy for my solution. Customer buys 1 x ring worth £1,000 + 10,000 widgets for £1,000 My solution: Select Courier Policy Nickname for Ring advert: "Jewellery policy <100g Spec Delivery 1pm" OR: Select Courier Policy ID: "06" Local customer in UK sees: Royal Mail Special Delivery 1pm Cost: £8.50 inc. VAT Processing time: 1 day Allow transit: 1 day ---> Customer buys 1 ring for £1000 + £8.50 P&P Select Courier Policy Nickname for Widget advert: "100 Widgets policy <100g Economy 3-5 days" OR: Select Courier Policy ID: "42" Local customer in UK sees: Royal Mail 2nd Class: £0.00 / £0.00 per extra item / Processing time: 1 day / Allow transit: 3-5 days Royal Mail 1st Class: £2.00 / £0.50 per extra item / Processing time: 1 day / Allow transit: 1-2 days Royal Mail Special Delivery 1pm / Cost: £8.50 inc. VAT / Processing time: 1 day / Allow transit: 1 day ---> Customer buys 100 lots @ Royal Mail 2nd Class (free delivery). Total: 10,000 widgets for £1000 + free P&P At checkout l have special rule: Buy 2 items, get 20% off cheapest item. Buy up to 5 items, get 40% off cheapest item Buy up to 10 items, get cheapest item free Buy up to 100 items get cheapest 5 items free. Therefore Buyer gets 5 free lots of widgets (100 widgets per lot) for free. That is a £50 discount. As for the postage, l decide its better that l send the ring separately because the ring absolutely must go special delivery, but the widgets actually weigh 2.75 kg, and therefore that's a small fortune to send by special delivery. That will go at the originally stated tariff: Royal Mail 2nd Class. Guess what, l actually make £10 profit from the postage and packing. Covers mishaps from other customers plus miscalculations from my own policies. ^^^^ See how it works so elegantly? Shipping solutions are really, really hard. What happens if someone buys 5 different items that need different shipping solutions? How do you present those options during checkout without making the checkout process a nightmare for the customer? Make the customer choose shipping for each item individually? Do it automatically for the customer? What if there are two items that absolutely cannot be shipped together due to size or weight restrictions? Maybe one item needs to go in a long tube by courier and another item needs to go on a pallet by truck. To give you an idea of how hard this really is, most sites just give up and offer "free" shipping by including the cost of shipping in the item price In case l didn't make it clear in my OP, l've made it clear just above. Oh l know about the vicissitudes of shipping, and if you read between the lines, l'm desperately trying to help you guys be the best, as l'd do for any other cart forum i come into contact with. Please examine my solution. Most website owners offer free shipping? So they bump prices off to cover shipping policy laziness. Then they get abandoned carts when customers do a quick price comparison a la Google or eBay. Then they hound customer via cart abandonment plugin. Woo woo! How about boxing clever? Look at my solution. It's a direct copy of eBay's solution. It works. eBay's shipping system is a nightmare. eBay's platform is a nightmare. eBay's shipping system works beautifully and keeps me competitive. Once you get the courier policies down, and futurerproofed for 3 years, you're singing. eBay's platform is repulsing me, true, that's why l and many others are looking around for alternatives. Why not take the best of all platforms without prejudice and incorporate them. People will be more willing to help you if you have better manners. You never know who might have a full solution to your shipping problem but not be willing to share it because of your rant. I already said in title it is an angsty rant. Also, i said "sorry guys" at the start of the sentence you're replying to. What more do you seriously want? I'll be willing to hear you out but make it on point. The point is couriers and such. Please don't stray. Couriers like DHL that charge for rural delivery and charge for shipping based on volumetric weights are a nightmare for a general cart solution. Presto-Changeo has some good modules that help with this, but they aren't free. Maybe you really don't get what l'm saying. My idea = FACELESS SHIPPING POLICIES. They may even name DHL or UPS or whatever. But in themselves, they don't connect to anything. If you want automated label generation, then add a UPS extension. Let customers see the price difference though, between your pre-defined "faceless" policies and the direct-via-courier prices offered by extensions. So, example policy: Nickname: "25kg Fragile hence EXPRESS --- includes World" Personal Note: "This is for Paracelforce Worldwide Express @ 50x50x40cm cost to you is £175" Relevant area: OCEANIA Outlying area: Micronesia - Global Express Courier @ £190 inc. insurance - 7-10 days ---> Customer in Micronesia pays £190 When it comes down to it, you go to a courier aggregator website and then suddenly see UPS are doing a really good promo - same location, £140, 7-10 days. See how it works now? Do you seriously think you're the first person to think about this? No, l've literally said do it like eBay does. But apart from eBay, yes, it would appear l'm the only person that has thought about shipping, ever. I mean that, l really do. Look at your complicated replies and then look at my simple solution. Also look at my offer to show you a template courier spreadsheet, and look at my OP where l showed you how the cart software would / could / should operate from that spreadsheet. Those are changes you want for your particular needs. Other merchants have different needs. If you want a custom shipping solution that exactly fits your needs then you will probably have to pay to have a shipping module written specifically for you. You might find one that is "close enough" from somewhere like Presto-Changeo (link above) but you might not. Custom work is expensive so most people end up going with a "good enough" solution that mostly fits what they want to do. If you look more deeply into the system TB offers already you will find that it is actually more flexible than you think. It's not perfect but it's not bad. IOW: Changes you'd need to make Of course you can do this. You can define shipping zones however you want to define them. If that means you want one country per zone or even one state per zone, you can do this. I've just checked out the zones in a different section. I guess that's what you meant. I nearly ran away screaming. What is that? What IS that? Well your very first word and very last word are accurate. So you've got that going for you, which is nice. Sorry but once again: please keep this about couriers. Please don't let ego get the better of you and walk off in a huff. I'd like to hear back from you about my ideas re: couriers.

Plus you won't even allow selection of individual countries in the Shipping Locations section. Gah!

By the way, you're not even doing carriers properly. I'm not talking about uploading them via spreadsheet template. I'm talking about the carrier database per se. It needs to have a Nickname field, that is the name by which it will be recoginised by YOU, so that you quickly know what it's for. For example: "<100g for Jewellery", or "<100g for 20 x screws in polythene bag." It also needs an expanded "Policy description" field, where you explain a bit more e.g. the box or envelope size used, or the maximum box or envelope sizes permitted. It also needs unlimited extra columns for "Outlying areas" where you get to explain what the Outlying Areas are, and the surcharge levied. Gosh, l honestly think none of these shopping carts - not just yours but ALL of the others too - actually have thought about actually posting things. They are all museumware. You look at it, why you wanna sell it and post it? Just look at it, if you are a professional then you will enjoy just doing that, why you wanna sell? Seriously, if you want to know my idea of a template courier spreadsheet, l can show you. I hope it would be a fairly minor upgrade to make the cart software work from that. Changes you'd need to make: - Make Shipping Policy ID part of the inventory spreadsheet too. - Make the software match Shipping Policy ID on inventory spreadsheet (i.e. per inventory item) to the relevant shipping policy on the Shipping Policy database. - THEN look at customer's country - THEN filter out all options that have nothing to do with customer's country - THEN all customer needs to do is choose an option - ON TOP OF THAT you can have - and l believe you already do have something similar - additional discount options taking in the entire cart contents all together. Ideally, it would be this: add an overarching multi-item rule (i.e. grand total cart discount) assembled via drop-down menu: Quantity / price / weight of total items in basket over X value --> get Y percent or absolute amount off of entire basket / cheapest item. That way, you can give your customers extra buying incentives but not ONLY that: if the customer buys multiple items each with a different shipping policy, then the situation will be ameliorated by the grand total cart discount aforementioned. Customer will be happy at paying a reduced shipping amount, and vendor can figure out how best to proceed with the mixed cart, but at least the vendor will likely have enough money to cover the shipping, after the grand total cart discount aforementioned. Please, don't dismiss this post, l really want to help out, if you want to see my template shopping policy spreadsheet just ask.

Hi there, >>> Are SEO keywords still a necessity? >>> What condition labels can l use? Only "new" "used" and "refurbished"? If so, then we need to evolve a bit and allow miscellaneous condition labels. Example: antique, new oldstock, new - other, and so on. >>> Do you really think it's wise to force Product Code to be made visible? What if the product code contains info that is not meant for customer e.g. date of original listing? We are not all manufacturers. Some of us sell used goods. We need to know when it's time to start discounting, so we need to keep track of how long an item has been listed for. Ideally this info would go in the SKU aka Product Code. You haven't changed this from stock open source cart script. I know this issue from other carts too. M O S T I M P O R T A N T L Y - P L E A S E R E A D T H I S : >>> I need a courier database upload template but there just isn't any. I know it's complicated but at the end of the day, it all ends up on a database, so why not have a template spreadsheet? I'd like to coin a term: Museumware. You can elegantly display your stock. But forget about shipping it ANYWHERE, EVER. Why you wanna ship it? It looks good on your shelf, you should keep it, no? >>> Why is there no courier policy ID column for the product upload template? I want to link a policy - offering many couriers for many nations, some nations having multiple couriers - to a specific product, and upload it all in one go. This is how eBay does things. This is, really, the correct way to do couriers. If we just did it by weight, then we would no longer be looking at the stock qualitatively + quantitatively (100g jewellery piece is WAY different to 10 x 2A fuses in a polythene bag, even if they both fall under the <100g Large Letter category, the jewellery must go express and be heavily insured, you see?), it'd just be quantitatively alone. Many many people buy and sell random odds and ends, we need to take each piece of stock for what it is. We haven't imported 1000 pieces all same model with 4 colour variations, it's not that simple for me, sorry. >>> Sorry guys but it seems like we're just taking open source code and tweaking logos. I mean, there's another shopping cart that uses a virtual identical backend as yours, and they have the exact same things lacking as l've just pointed out here. I've seen a few carts now and they generally have the same issues that l've listed here. I get that there's no such thing as a free meal. The software corporations want you to eventually hand over cash for a service or extension. Maybe adding a bespoke courier array is a special service that we must pay money for. If so, then just say so. Better still, don't make couriers an obstacle, make us a catch-all spreadsheet template so that we can upload courier policies (l have about 60 policies, each with about 75 columns), generate a policy ID for each policy, and then put that ID into a Policy ID column per inventory item for the separate inventory upload spreadsheet.