Zen Cart UPS Rate not Matching Real UPS Rates

[DrByte]

Are you supplying any product dimensions when you request a quote on their website?
Zen Cart doesn't currently let you do that, so therefore it obtains quotes without considering size factors.

[mrtechnique]

I'm not supplying any dimensions on the UPS site. These are the dimensions I have set up in Zen Cart:

UPS Method: CC
UPS Packaging: CP
Residential Delivery? RES

My Zen Cart store is quoting $46.24 for Ground and UPS.com is quoting $67.95.

[Trac Nez]

I have a suggestion for a possible cause. Your item is 100 lbs. You seem to be assuming that this entire amount will ship in a single box. It is possible that you set the maximum weight per box, such that zen cart assumes more boxes than listed. This would change the price, and would produce a different value from your direct checking based on the 1 box that you assume. To test this, drop the weight to 10 pounds and see if it is still incorrect.

[DrByte]

Good point.

What are all your settings set to in Admin->Configuration->Shipping/Packaging ?

[mrtechnique]

Thank you, both. That solved the problem. I had the maximum shipping weight per package set at 50 lbs. When I increased the maximum shipping weight to 100 lbs., I compared the shipping rates again and they match exactly. The Zen Cart forum rocks!

[BlessIsaacola]

Actually that problem is solved but the BIGGEST problem for me right now is that Zen Cart doesn't support dimension for any shipping module.

If you offer USPS Express, UPS 3 Days, 2 Days, 1 Day or Overnight and your package is bigger than 10 x 10 x 10 you're going to see a HUGE discrepancy between Zen Cart quotes and actual price from UPS. This is actually affecting our bottom line so bad that we are considering not offering express services until Zen Cart includes this feature or we can figure out a way to technically solve this problem.

We've attempted using table rate to configure express shipping but that hasn't work as desired because it is not flexible enough.

It would even be nice if there is a feature to charge handling fee per shipping option (1 Day, 2 Days, etc.). At least that would provide a poor man's solution :)

This is major headache for us.

[mrtechnique]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm sure a solution will appear somewhere