Limit Shipping Type by Cart Total Value

[dynambee]

Currently the available shipping types can be limited by the total weight of the items in the cart.

I would like to add the ability to also limit the available shipping types by the total value of the items in the cart.

So, for example:

Shipping Type 1: Max 2kg, Max Cart Value $50

Shipping Type 2: Max 2kg, Max Cart Value $100

Shipping Type 3: Max 30kg, No Upper Value Limit (or an unrealistically high limit, say $20k)

Does anyone know how to add this functionality, or perhaps know of an existing (& compatible) PS 1.6 module that does this?

All help appreciated!

[haylau]

This seems to be the "holy Grail"

I have been looking for a solution for years and not found anything yet. It is difficult when products are a mix of high weight / low value, and low weight / high value products.

 

 

[dynambee]

A while back I looked into just modifying the PHP myself, and adding a "max_cart_value" field to the carrier db table. It didn't seem like it should be all that difficult to do but I don't really want to monkey with the core files. I also don't know where else the carrier options might appear that might need to be changed too. Basically I hesitate to poke around in code that I don't really understand in any depth. Law of unintended consequences and all that...

Maybe @Traumflug knows? If the code for the carrier options is changed and a field is added to the db table to facilitate this (assuming the field is manually set, nothing fancy...) would this be enough to make this limit work? Of course any upgrade would bork the new code so that would need to be manually managed. Or perhaps there is another way to accomplish this?

[Factor]

8 hours ago, dynambee said:

Shipping Type 1: Max 2kg, Max Cart Value $50

Shipping Type 2: Max 2kg, Max Cart Value $100

 Shipping Type 3: Max 30kg, No Upper Value Limit (or an unrealistically high limit, say $20k)

Ok when you say shipping type You mean Carrier?

Are you using Price or weight?  I would think you are wanting to use price.

Billing

According to total price.

According to total weight.

1. Do you mean if you have 1 kg of items you want all carries shown?

2 if you have 3 Kgs you only want carrier 3 shown?

I think if I understand you this can be achieved in the Maximum package weight  section on screen 3.

 

thanks

bd

 

[haylau]

@Brent Dacus - No. You have misunderstood. It has to be a combination of both

 

Example

Product 1 weighs 100g  and costs £1 . Carrier 1 and Carrier 2 can be shown . Carrier 1 is slow, cheap and does not have tracking, carrier 2 is exensive but quick and with tracking

Product 2 weighs 100 g and costs £100 - carrier 1 is no good becuase it does not have tracking carrier 1 should be disabled and only carrier 2 is available

 

[Factor]

9 minutes ago, haylau said:

Product 2 weighs 100 g and costs £100 - carrier 1 is no good becuase it does not have tracking carrier 1 should be disabled and only carrier 2 is available

ok so in product 2 under shiping don't you just only show carrier 2.

 

 

The OP doesn't speak of tracking or good or bad carriers...

Edited June 5, 2019 by Brent Dacus
better screenshot

[haylau]

10 minutes ago, Brent Dacus said:

ok so in product 2 under shiping don't you just only show carrier 2.

 

Two reasons.

1) Because there are hundreds / thousands of products and would not want to go through each one in turn (and how would that work with combination orders)

But mainly:

2) Because the examples were very simple examples. In reality it is a lot more complex. Where for example product 3 may be only 10g and cost £10 each so OK to send 1 by the cheap slow carrier 1, but if the customer purchase 100 we would not want to use carrier 1 even though the weight would still fall in this bracket. In that case carrier 1 may be £1.50, where as carrier 2 with tracking would cost £10 so customer would always choose the cheap carrier and we loose money. Again this is an simple example, reaility is more complicated with perhaps 10 carries and different postcodes. So carrier 1 may be £5 for postcode 1, and £20 for postcode 2

I know the OP has not mentioned tracking. They did not need to I was only giving an exaple of how and when a combined weight / price limit was appropriate. It is the kind of thing where country, product types make a difference. So I dont know what you sell or where you sell it. All I can say is that I know what solution I need (and I guess the OP) because of our particular business operates. 

Anyway enough to say that it is very complex and that there is a genuine need for a combined weight / price limit scenario - believe me I have been trying to get this right for over 7 years!

[Factor]

2 minutes ago, haylau said:

enough to say that it is very complex

Sounds like it.  I was not reading into the OP question.  I was just answering what was written

I agree.  I don't think the PS/TB Shipping system is complex enough.  Needs more features.  However its Open source so you could hire a DEV to do whatever you want and make it the best for you.

7 minutes ago, haylau said:

1) Because there are hundreds / thousands of products and would not want to go through each one in turn (and how would that work with combination orders)

I think you could update the all fairly easy with prestatools.  You would have to test it and see how it works in your Test System.

 

12 minutes ago, haylau said:

genuine need for a combined weight / price limit scenario

Agreed.

[dynambee]

@haylau has explained it very well. It seems simple at first but it gets very complicated very quickly. Besides not really being effective (as explained by haylau) it rapidly becomes impractical if not impossible to manage per-item carrier assignments for a site with 5000, 10000 or more items.

There is also a big problem because TB (and the origin project) do not handle things well if there are different items in the cart that have differing shipping options available. In fact it doesn't handle things at all in some cases and customers are just told that no shipping option is available, with no further explanation.

This description is only scratching the surface of the problem. The way the TB shipping system is set up is flexible but it can result in multiple copies of the same carrier needing to be created for different zones or countries, resulting in dozens of "different" carriers. I'm sure it sounds absurd but I have been working on this problem for quite a while.

The best & easiest workable solution by far is to limit low-cost (slower, maybe no tracking, perhaps no insurance, etc) shipping types to low total cart values. This avoids so many different problems and greatly reduces the complexity of the carrier & item setup.

 

44 minutes ago, Brent Dacus said:

However its Open source so you could hire a DEV to do whatever you want and make it the best for you.

I actually decided to do this soon after my original post. It's really the ideal solution for my needs and would solve a lot of the problems I face with the shipping & carrier setup.

[Factor]

2 minutes ago, dynambee said:

actually decided to do this soon after my original post

Yep.  Based on the old adage you get what you pay for...  I would say either a dev or a different product might be best.  Nothing will ever be perfect.  Mostly because us Humans created it.

Hope you get there.  

[dynambee]

Thirty Bees is just about perfect for my needs except for this problem with the shipping system. I haven't found any other cart that comes close to matching my needs as well as TB does so getting this fixed is quite a priority for me.