Shipping Cost Estimator Accuracy

[wormgineer]

So let me ask this of everyone:

Does everybody accept that their customers will be presented with an order screen that does not accurately reflect shipping costs when shipping by UPS?

An estimate is good enough?
Customers don't complain?
Will I be paying for the extra charges the shipping module appears to ignore?

The more I look into this, the less impressed I am. It appears that residential delivery and fuel surcharges are not accounted for, and even allowing for that, the shipping amounts are not agreeing with what UPS says it is going to charge me when I set up a shipment on the UPS site.

I like zencart and it is available at a very good price, I just want to know what is going on!

[wormgineer]

Or is it accurate for you guys so I must be doing something wrong?

[Ajeh]

Could you post your Ship From and Ship To addresses and the weight that you are shipping ...

What rates do you see on your shipping estimator?

What settings are you using on UPS and what rates are you seeing?

[wormgineer]

I would be happy to provide that info, and did provide some on the opening post.

I don't expect others to solve all my problems and I'll be happy to provide any info to take advantage of your help, but first, can you or others answer the basic question here?

Does this work for you guys? Do your customers get an accurate shipping cost line item at checkout, that ends up matching actual UPS billings?

If it doesn't work in general, I don't want to waste your or my time trying to debug it in my case.

[Ajeh]

Could you perhaps provide specific Ship From, Ship To and weight being tested and the settings in UPS site that you are using to do the comparisons?

[wormgineer]

OK fine, but I have a bad feeling about this.

Not a single person is able to step up and make the simple post that this module is accurate?

That's weird. And scary.

I'll do another example and put another post together for you but I have a strong feeling it will be a huge waste of time because the shipping module cannot be expected to match actual shipping charges.

Actually, I'm going to wait an hour to start that project and check back first.

My first words here were "it claims only to estimate and not quote" and if that's the answer, would somebody just say so?


Perhaps there is a problem and you all honestly thought it was totally accurate and I happen to be the first person to make an issue of it. That would be weird but not totally unprecedented for me. So I will roll my sleeves up and help as much as I can to resolve the issue, but I hate chasing wild geese.

[Ajeh]

The Shipping Estimator and checkout_shipping are both obtaining Real Time quotes from UPS ...

They use the same code to make the calls ...