UK Counties zones update?

[Brent]

Agree it was very good.

His site is still up but there's no activity on his forums. The last email I got from him was an update he sent out in December 2008.

[garethrooney]

Hi

I've had the counties imported for a while however and originally in my zone definition I just had 'UK' under which I just had it listed as 'all zones'

I recently split this into 'uk mainland' and 'uk non-mainland' so I can increase the shipping to addresses off mainland uk.

I have my counties set as a drop down so this forces them to pick one which is ok for customers going through the native site checkout from now on as it forces them. I've had a few emails off people saying if forgot their county so ive added them.

The problem is with those that try and pay with paypal or google checkout and and have either left the county field blank or put something stupid in. As when they arrive back to my site after logging in they get a 'we do not ship to your area' and with them being to thick in the first place to get the county right this screen is then too much for them and they promptly leave!

So basicly is there some form of wildcard for the county, say it matches non of those in either of the defined zones in and of the zone definitions it automatically uses 'uk mainland' to bypass the shipping screen?

I guess you put a blank county under united kingdom to get those that dont fill the county in but what about those that put 'onionshire' or something in?

Thanks

Gareth

[Ryk]

You can keep struggling with this or you could install Ceon's Advanced Shipper. It IS a commercial module but allows you to completely bypass the default zones system and set up just about any shipping options you require.

To my mind, this is an essential shipping module for anyone in the UK who needs to differentiate between UK Mainland, Highlands & Islands (and the Channel Islands) because it allows you to define region by postcode if you wish.

It also comes with probably the best documentation for any ZC module.

You need to balance the value of your time/effort against the cost of the module, but if you are serious about your business, then you won't find a better solution for shipping when outside the default ZC capabilities.