Set Shipping Cost by Vendor?

[Kryspen]

I'm still using 1.3.8 because my priority is to get my site built and live.

I'm drop shipping, and basically have three vendors at the moment. I originally set my shipping module to ship by unit, with the weight being taken as the price. That's fine unless somebody wants to buy two items from the same vendor. Two of them, at least, charge a flat rate shipping by order.

Do I have to set up these vendors in a separate category, or categories, which will mean totally revamping my store, or is there some way I can set shipping by vendor/Manufacturer?

Please advise me

Dave Smith
www.fernslist.com

[Ajeh]

When you say two vendors charge a flat rate is that flat rate per item or per order?

On the third vendor ... does the Per Unit perweightunit work correctly?

[Kryspen]

The 2 vendors charge a flat rate per order.

Everything for the third vendor seems to be fine at this stage.

Cheers,

Dave

[Ajeh]

So what you could do is set 0 weight on those two vendors with the Flat Charge per order and let the Per Unit perweightunit calculate the charges as it is right now ... then test the order to see if it contains 1 or more Products from each of the 2 vendors with the Flat Charge and add it to the cost calculated by the Per Unit perweightunit modules ...

Now, for these two vendors ... are they the manufacturers_id of the products table on these Products?

[Kryspen]

Yes, I think what you're suggesting that would do the job. I'm not sure how I would go about testing the orders, though.

As for your last question, I'm not quite sure what you mean. I have set the vendor as the manufacturer for the product. Is that the answer to your question?

Thanks for your help,

Dave

[Ajeh]

You can test each of the manufacturers_id with:
$chk_manufactuer_10 = $_SESSION['cart']->in_cart_check('manufacturers_id','10');
$chk_manufactuer_25 = $_SESSION['cart']->in_cart_check('manufacturers_id','25');

Now you can add to the cost based on these results by added the extra cost to:

    $this->quotes = array('id' => $this->code,
                          'module' => MODULE_SHIPPING_PERWEIGHTUNIT_TEXT_TITLE,
                          'methods' => array(array('id' => $this->code,
                                                   'title' => MODULE_SHIPPING_PERWEIGHTUNIT_TEXT_WAY,
                                                   'cost' => MODULE_SHIPPING_PERWEIGHTUNIT_COST * ($total_weight_units * $shipping_num_boxes) +
                                                   (MODULE_SHIPPING_PERWEIGHTUNIT_HANDLING_METHOD == 'Box' ? MODULE_SHIPPING_PERWEIGHTUNIT_HANDLING * $shipping_num_boxes : MODULE_SHIPPING_PERWEIGHTUNIT_HANDLING) ) ));

[fairestcape]

Your customers are going to be horrified when they see that they could be paying THREE shipping charges for their order!

If, for example, I put into my cart:-

product 1001 @ £10 from vendor A, with shipping = £6.50

product 1002 @ £10 from vendor B, with shipping = £6.50

product 1003 @ £10 from vendor C, with shipping = £6.50

Total Product Cost = £30
Total Shipping = £ 19.50

AND... I have to wait at home for THREE SEPARATE DELIVERIES from THREE SEPARATE DELIVERY COMPANIES.

Have you looked at the PRACTICAL implications of using so many drop-shippers in one site?

I don't think you are going to get many customers who will pay such a high price - both in money and time.

Good luck.

[Kryspen]

Your customers are going to be horrified when they see that they could be paying THREE shipping charges for their order!

Now that's something I hadn't really thought through, fairestcape, and thank you for pointing it out. I think I could easily limit myself to 2 vendors each selling completely different types of product. I still have the problem that one sells bulky items with shipping per item and the other sells small items shipping per order. I hope this will be acceptable for my customers because neither sells what the other provides.

Thanks again,

Dave

[fairestcape]

About four years ago we helped 3 aspirant companies to build sites to link to drop-shippers.

Of the three, two companies linked to just a single (quite large) drop-shipper here in the UK. (If you PM me I will tell you what that dropshipper is).

The third company went down a similar route to the one you are about to follow.

Today, of the three sites we built the two that are still in business are the ones that used a SINGLE dropshipper. These two are barely profitable, however..

The one that failed tried to use several dropshippers.

When we asked the client why the site had failed, he said that the practicalities of trying to manage all the activities of three different shippers was not only a nightmare (refunds, returns, enquiries etc) that erroded all his profits, but that most people abandoned their carts when they saw how expensive the shipping would be.

He also said that for the few customers who did order, he never got any repeat businss from them. Their purchases were just one-offs...

One of the other things that emerged was the wafer-thin margins you can put on top of your drop-shipper's prices.

Remember, a drop-shipper will have MANY people tapping into their system. Some have HUNDREDS of people selling via their own websites - some even have THOUSANDS of sellers.

Every one of these people is selling EXACTLY the same product, from EXACTLY the same dropshipper.

In this environment there is only one real differential... PRICE.

So, if you are buying an item from a drop-shipper for £10, you can be absolutely certain that there are scores of other sites selling that item at a fraction more than £10 just to be competitive (just look on Google Shopping to see what I mean!)

Our take on the drop-shipping industry is that it is now way beyond saturation point and is well past its peak. Unless you have massive resources, time and investment muscle, there is little point in entering the fray. Google Shopping has completely levelled the playing field. And PRICE is the only differential.

If you want to make money out of drop-shipping, then examine the potential of being the supplier (the drop-shipper). It's safer (in our opinion), than trying to compete as an agent for a drop-shipper.

[Kryspen]

I've been thinking of ways to do this. Is it possible to ship one category of goods flat rate and the other by item weight?

Cheers,

Dave