Pre-select a shipping method?

[JS1scuba]

We ship with a variety of methods but only show UPS rates and USPS.

We will only ship with USPS if the customer selects that on check out. If they selected UPS we will decide if its UPS or FED EX

Our Shipping Page (define page editor) shows our "policies" CLICK HERE if you want to look at it.

Under <Configuration> Shipping / Packing we have made some adjustments to take into consideration packing and dunnage cost and weight

Small to Medium, and Large we add a small percentage to the weight to take into consideration UPS fuel charges, address search, high residential fees, etc.

All our items are weighed before we add them to Zen and are weighted with a single size small box.

Under Shipping Module we add $1.75 service charge to all USPS and we assume all UPS will go residential.

By doing all of this we are able to let the customer chose the most economical method for THEM based on our parameters. Our parameters let us cover our costs of a shipping department (space, computer, printers) boxes, labels, tape, packing materials etc. It also allows us to cover for mis shipments (that happens) carrier loss (that happens too) and it also has covered all of our IN-BOUND cost of goods on incoming inventory.

On occasion we will have a supplier drop ship for us. Whatever they charge me for it is fine. It ends up in shipping cost-of-goods anyway. They get MY packing slip and put my name on the From Label -- my customer is also told we have dropped ship to save him some time.

We do have some items that are FREE SHIPPING but we do that based on a deal we made with some of our suppliers who ship to us free. Most of the time when a customer is buying one item with free shipping they are also getting other items without free shipping and in the end it all works out.

Last year my cost of shipping and supplies was $28,500 and my charges to customers for shipping were about $31k we had shipping loses of about $1200. Net sum ...... shipping is not a cost to us, it's just cash flow.

Cheers

[rhutchison]

That's a great way to handle it Joel. Thanks for the advice!

-Roger