[Old] Royal Mail Modules

[Pixxi]

Not sure if I've made any modifications to the individual modules before I started up

Ok. No problem, I'll just do a diff then.

Who wants to do "standard parcels " then ?

Errm ... most UK customers?

Eg. Weight up to 2kg:

ParcelForce Standard £5.31
1st Class small packet £7.29
ParcelForce 48 (up to 10kg) £14.25

Ie. there isn't a band below 10kg for PF48, plus you can send up to 20kg on ParcelForce Standard for £12.46, compared to £22.25 on PF 48.

Maybe if you have a lot of business customers they might want to save the extra 2/3 days (and pay more) if the order is urgent, but I'm thinking most non-business UK customers would rather wait a bit longer and save themselves a few pounds (or shop somewhere else). And perhaps that does depend to some extent on what you're selling.

But in any case, those of us who want one could probably create a Standard PF module based on the PF48 (as you said), so no problem.

[bouncingltd]

OH bother and damnation about the parcelforce, I might change it to the 24 rates or the standard rates or something, doesn't matter really as long as the basis for the rates are there, in fact I could probably come up with a cunning set of sql for whichever rates people choose, but I've honestly not been looking at the prices because I never use parcel force. I could have launched my own site a month ago. I think I may be doing this because it's more intellectually taxing than lens caps.

[bouncingltd]

ParcelForce Standard for £12.46

Do you have a parcelforce standard tarriff ? because I was donated the spreadsheets for retail pricing and the cheapest showing up on there is parcelforce 48 ?

[Pixxi]

Hi Philip,

PF's website is down for maintenance at present, so I can't give you the link, but these are the current rates from the August 2006 leaflet:

Weight:
Up to: - Cost:
1kg - £3.85
1.5kg - £4.95
2kg - £5.31
4kg - £7.70
6kg - £8.74
8kg - £9.97
10kg - £10.70
20kg - £12.46

Compensation:
Up to: - Cost:

£100 - £1
£250 - £2.25
£500 - £3.50

But please don't spend time on this if you have other things more pressing - from what you've said it should be simple for people to adapt the PF48 module.

It's just so useful to have the set of RM modules you've already completed in any case.

[tonyrobbo]

Hi, it seems there is some confusion about the Parcelforce rates, the rates that Pixxi quoted above are for Royal Mail standard parcels not Parcelforce!

These will not be delivered via Parcelforce so are not going to be affected by the Parcelforce zones.

I have an account with Parcelforce and the cheapest service is the 48 hour within the UK and i get a fixed rate for parcels upto 30kg

Hope this helps Philip

[bouncingltd]

The I shall at some point create a standard parcels module, though I believe that standard parcels is not trackable ? My computer went beeep-biiiip-beeeip just now, odd that since I don't have any sound drivers installed. I shall be releasing version 2.0 beta very shortly hopefully before things start crashing. Maybe those security updates were important after all....

[tonyrobbo]

Yea thats correct Philip, Standard Parcels are not trackable and work just the same way as 1st & 2nd class.

[Pixxi]

... are for Royal Mail standard parcels not Parcelforce

Yes, you're absolutely right - my mistake for not noticing the difference. I'm obviously returning to the days when ParcelForce used to be part of Royal Mail

No, standard parcels is not trackable (no signature or tracking number).

It would still be a very useful module to have in the UK series though for people who only send bigger parcels occasionally and so don't have/need a ParcelForce account for the cheaper volumes/rates. Thinking about it, it would be pretty easy to adapt one of the other RM modules into a 'Standard Parcels' module since standard parcels doesn't use zones - I'll have a go at that tomorrow maybe.

[bouncingltd]

It's available from here :

http://bouncing.org/big_royalmail_v2.0-beta.zip

I haven't updated anything from 1.5 including installation instructions but it should be vaild, e.g. copy big_royalmail_v2.0-beta/images/* to your images folder and the same with includes. The instructions are in the top level of big_royalmail_v2.0-beta for the module called ukzr, short for UK Zone Records, the rates are parcelforce 48, and the instructions are in pdf format. Sorry about that I know it's breaking with tradition but there are a lot of going into admin > tool > install sql patches and I need my italics.

Now here's a thing, faulkn submitted a rm2ndlargelettersf.php module for second class recorded, I am logged out of zen cart (v 1.3.5 on linux) as a shopper, at the moment and even though the module appears completely correct, I see a little orange status gif to the side of the sort order, and I have no idea why. Strange thing is, is that two weeks ago I fixed this on something else and I have no memory of it (medication again, sometimes things just go) it was a bugger of a thing to track down too.

Pixxi - by all means have a go at standard parcels, should be a case sensitive search and replace I think, so pick a module with not many weights and then redfine them. I personally think you are going to be spending a lot of time trying to work out how to get the 2.0 Beta working, but I will take anyone's recommendations as to bits missing from the instructions etc....

Thank you

Philip.

[bouncingltd]

Bug number 1

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_RM2NDLARGELETTER_ZONES_COST0_1 in /var/www/html/lenscaps/zen-cart-v1.3.5-full-fileset/includes/modules/shipping/rm2ndlargelettersf.php on line 105

if you get this, this has now been fixed for the next release, I won't but uploading it yet, BUT don't use 2nd Class Signed for as if 2nd Class is installed, it gives Second class prices, not the signed for ones, and if 2nd Class is uninstalled it throws the above error 4 times. Also I still have not tracked down the mysteriously yellow/ orange gif problem.