Pre-select a shipping method?

Hello

I have four different carriers that is available for our customers. How can I pre-select the radio button as to which shipping method 'should' be used?

I suspect by default, the program has selected the lowest cost shipment--but, I want to change it.

help? answers?

thank you
Gem

I don't think you can do it that way.

But that would solve some of my dropshipping problems.

What would happen when someone chooses a product that has ups shipping and then chooses another product that has usps shipping?

I would suspect that it would be your discretion for the items shipping structure, as you tell your customer who orders those types of products. You may have to eat the cost of freight from time to time, but, adding a handling charge in your modules should help make up for some of that. :cool:

even though, however, I'd still like to change my options. Hmmm..just had a thought....I should add more to the frt options to see if the pre-select frt company that I want will become 'pre-selected'

good luck
Gem

I tested my theory above and it worked. Hopefully, someone will have an answer, as it will default to the lowest frt cost shipper. Oh well

Gem

Gem:

How can I pre-select the radio button as to which shipping method 'should' be used?

First, you need to define the "rules" for how each method should be selected ...

define the rules?? where?

Gem

Right here.
Write them out. The shipping rules.
In English.

There's no way to write code without knowing what needs to be written.
And we can't tell you how to tell existing modules to do something different if we don't know exactly what you're after.

Thus far you've been rather vague in what you're wanting to do.

I can tell you how to *not* select the cheapest-available option.
But that's not what you asked for.

Gem:

I have four different carriers that is available for our customers. How can I pre-select the radio button as to which shipping method 'should' be used?

Basically, how would *you* decide which shipping method "should" be used -- in each and every possible case.

ok, wow, I really appreciate this, your help. But the more I think on this the worse it gets.

for our lingerie, we can only use:
Fedex Ground, Fedex Express, and UPS, per our drop shipper.

All of our other products, we ship and prefer USPS, because their the easiest to get out the door our to our customer.

However, we will have a predicument if a customer buys lingerie and a piece of jewlery. They will have two seperate shipments, since one item will be from us and another from the drop shipper. Yes, we'll be eating up some freight charges too, but that the chance we have to take.

guess you can tell I'm a girl :blush: always changing things.

Before you go to too much trouble...let me think on this some more, so as it stands now...the radio button for Fedex Ground is check cause it is cheaper...go figure

thanks again
Gem

A lot of these issues about 'default shipping', 'pre-selected shipping', etc. could be "helped" by simply changing the code to not pre-select any of the shipping radio buttons in checkout (and not boldfacing the cheapest in the shipping estimator). Just give our customer the choices without marking any of them as cheapest.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90218

Rather than start a new thread, my question is very close to the original here.

I only do dropshipping with my business, and I have three different suppliers.

Here are my rules:

Supplier #1 provides flat rate shipping per item. I roll the shipping cost into the the item cost and have the "free shipping" module enabled for that. I want to have Free Shipping as the only available option.

Supplier #2 uses FedEx only. I need to have FedEx as the only shipping method for their items.

Supplier #3 uses UPS only. I need to have UPS as the only shipping method available for their items.

Due to the nature of the products, it's unlikely that a customer would choose items from multiple suppliers on the same order. However, if they did I would like the cart to display a message indicating such, and calculate the shipping for each item.

Is there a module that does this?

Thanks for the help.

-Roger

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

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

-Roger