Oversized boxes throwing off shipping estimates

[tracyfloyd]

Hey everyone,
My client sells wicker baskets in their online store. Some of these are rather large and require a large box for shipping, but being wicker, they are very light. Because of the size of the boxes needed, UPS often charges an "Oversize" fee, so when I go to do shipping estimates based on one of these large baskets I only get an estimate based on the weight.

3lb. basket #1 might be accurate, because it is smaller and fits into a normal box
3lb. basket #2 might be very innacurrate because it is really large and has to have a cnon-standard box for it.

Whats the best way to handle this so that we are sure that shipping costs are covered?

Is there a way for me to flag large items that will need to have a larger box so that it can be considered during estimating?

[Ajeh]

One way to do it is adding weight to the individual Product ...

Another is to add a Handling Fee to offset the difference ...

Otherwise, you may need to custom code a field to adjust the weight ...

I think the easiest thing is to add weight to the products causing this problem to offset the charges ...

NOTE: If you do not want weight to show because of this, you could turn weight off on all displays ...

[2004g35]

This would really be a great module for someone to design - most of my boxes are oversize. Adding weight works most of the time (sort of). What is the best way to add a handling fee on a 'per item' basis? Thank

[Ajeh]

My first thought is turn off the display of weight and then adjust the weight per product ...

Another way, less desireable, is to use attributes for more weight ... but this forces the customer to go to the product _info page to add the product vs being able to add from where ever there is an add to cart button in a listing etc.

If you already have attributes then you have nothing lost by tweaking weights per attribute ...

But I would thing the added weight per product would be the better solution ...