Free shipping should NOT be showing!

[rstevenson]

Hi experts,

In my wholesale store (link below) all shipments should be charged a shipping fee. For some reason Free shipping appears as an option. Yikes!

In admin/configuration/shipping packaging I have Order Free Shipping 0 Weight Status set to 0, which from the description should prevent this.

Also, under admin/modules/shipping I have the following settings turned ON...
Per Item
Personal Service
Table Rate
Zone Rates
...and the rest are OFF, including...
Free Shipping Options
FREE SHIPPING!

So according to all this, there should be no circumstances under which a customer could choose Free Shipping, but here's a screen shot...

Even stranger, this seems to be depedant on how many items are ordered. If there's only a few, the correct shipping options appear!?! Here's another screen shot showing that...

What the heck is going on? More importantly, how can I fix it. I don't like shipping free.

[DrByte]

Looking at your screenshots tells me that your "free shipping" problem is a result of your settings in your Zone Rate shipping module (notice that the words "free shipping" are inside the fieldset dedicated to "Zone Rates").

What are your settings in the Zone Rates module ?

[rstevenson]

The Doctor is in the house!

My Zone Rates module says...

Zone Based Rates

Enable Zones Method
True

Calculation Method
Item

Tax Class
Tax on Shipping

Tax Basis
Shipping

Sort Order
1

Skip Countries, use a comma separated list of the two character ISO country codes


Zone 1 Countries
CA

Zone 1 Shipping Table
60:10.50,100:12.50,150:14.50

Zone 1 Handling Fee
0

Zone 2 Countries
US

Zone 2 Shipping Table
60:10.50,100:12.50,150:14.50

Zone 2 Handling Fee
5.00

Zone 3 Countries
00

Zone 3 Shipping Table
60:10.50,100:12.50,150:14.50

Zone 3 Handling Fee
25.00

I hope that is meaningful and frank, as the politicians say.

Rob

[DrByte]

Even stranger, this seems to be depedant on how many items are ordered. If there's only a few, the correct shipping options appear!?!

Um ... well ... that's kinda logical ... unless you didn't intentionally have the module set to "Item" ...

Can you explain exactly how many items triggers this undesired free shipping quote?

What do you have defined in your zones.php language file for this entry ?
MODULE_SHIPPING_ZONES_UNDEFINED_RATE

[rstevenson]

Um ... well ... that's kinda logical ... unless you didn't intentionally have the module set to "Item" ...

Not really logical. There is no such thing as free shipping for our wholesale store. There isn't any minimum quantity order (or maximum) but there is a minimum dollar order. So in theory you could order a large number of just one greeting card, or a smaller number of many of them. And if the total quantity of cards was the same for both orders, the shipping costs would be very close to identical. And neither would be free.

I find the various shipping set ups to be a little confusing, so if there's an error in logic in the way I've set them up, maybe that's the problem.

Can you explain exactly how many items triggers this undesired free shipping quote?

Well, the two images above show the shipping step for test orders of 3 cards, 50 each; and for about a dozen cards, 10 of each. Both orders are possible, and both should not offer free shipping. I haven't tried to find the precise tipping point between the free shipping offer and the correct shipping quotes.

What do you have defined in your zones.php language file for this entry ?
MODULE_SHIPPING_ZONES_UNDEFINED_RATE

That is "Free shipping!" but only because I didn't like the default which said something about the shipping rate cannot be determined at this time. I'd rather give free shipping than sound like I can't set up the store right. But I'd rather not give free shipping at all.

Both my test orders were placed by "me" as a test account, so they didn't come from an undefined zone.

Thanks for helping with this.

Rob

[rstevenson]

I think I should add a bit of background to avoid getting off on a tangent about the item rates.

Greeting cards are sold at wholesale in a somewhat standardized way. They are sold by "face" (the particular card) and by quantity. Often there are minimums of both enforced. That's how we do it.

Customers must order a minimum of 6 of each face they want. A Minimum order value of $100 is also enforced by the cart, which works out to a little over 60 cards (but an unknown number of faces.)

Although most retailers will order anywhere from 12 to 50 or more faces, and often 6, 12 or more of each, it is possible to have orders involving just a few faces and larger quantities of each. A recent order totaled 400 cards but only involved 6 faces.

So I guess the issue might come down to what Zen Cart thinks of as "items". Is an item the number of lines in the cart? Or is it the total of the quantities of all lines in the cart? The latter, I hope.

But I think that's not the problem anyway, as the correct shipping was calculated for the test order with the least items, and the free shipping was offered for the test order with the most items, no matter how you count them.

It almost looks like the problem is coming from the define you asked about, the MODULE_SHIPPING_ZONES_UNDEFINED_RATE. If that's where the text Free shipping! is coming from, then the question is why does the cart think the zone is undefined for some orders and not for others? (Both my test orders were placed from the same account.)

I hope these extra details help with sorting it out.

Rob

[rstevenson]

I think the penny finally dropped. (I've noticed before that if I just talk to myself long enough, I can figure things out.)

I've been thinking that MODULE_SHIPPING_ZONES_UNDEFINED_RATE refers to an undefined zone. But I think now it refers to an undefined rate for a zone. Coupling that amazing insight with my entry for, say, the Ca zone...

Zone 1 Shipping Table
60:10.50,100:12.50,150:14.50

...leads me to notice that I've defined a rate only up to 150 items. If the order is for more than that, the rate is undefined. When I originally set this up I took the rate table to mean...
for 60 to 100 items charge 10.50 (less than 60 doesn't work due to our minimums)
for 100 to 150 items, charge 12.50
for 150 or more items, charge 14.50.

But I'll bet it actually means...
for 0 to 60 items charge 10.50
for 60 to 100 items, charge 12.50
for 100 to 150 items, charge 14.50
... and that more than 150 items is undefined.

Okay, I'll enter an insanely large number there and see if that fixes the problem. Hold on a sec ... ... ... ...

Yes! It's working now.

Thanks Doc, for poking me in the right direction. Now all I have to do is fix up the zone tables and the tables tables so they actually do what I thought they should do.

Rob