Fitting Oversized-Undepriced items into Shipping Table

My client has decided to add oversized posters to their online offerings and it has wrecked shipping. They won't fit into a price based table because although they are one of the least expensive items on the site to purchase they are the most expensive to ship.

We thought of developing a weight based shipping chart and inflating the weight of these posters, but then it charges that extra amount for EACH poster...it doesn't actually cost much more to mail 3 posters than it does to mail one, but the system would charge three times as much.

Is there a way to add a surcharge to items that appear in a certain category? I could set up an oversized items category and all those items would have an additional shipping cost?

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to handle this? I am at a loss, and the customer is losing money on each poster sale.:frusty:

Are your Products in multiple categories for these oversized items?

Would just the count of how many help in adding the extra charge?

Item count would work if I could do it by category. All the oversized items are currently under "posters", and I wouldn't be opposed to putting them in a special "Oversized Posters" category.

Unfortunately we also sell very small and inexpensive to ship items, like individual notecards, so a straight up item count across all categories wouldn't work at all.

I wish I was more well-versed in php. I fear I may be paying someone to make a module.

(sigh)

In the tables.php you can use just above the quote:

    $this->quotes = array('id' => $this->code,
    'module' => MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_TEXT_TITLE . $show_box_weight,
    'methods' => array(array('id' => $this->code,
    'title' => MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_TEXT_WAY,
    'cost' => $shipping + MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_HANDLING)));

change it to read:

// count how many are in categories_id 10 where master_categories_id = 10
$how_many = $_SESSION['cart']->in_cart_check('master_categories_id', 10);
    $this->quotes = array('id' => $this->code,
    'module' => MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_TEXT_TITLE . $show_box_weight,
    'methods' => array(array('id' => $this->code,
    'title' => MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_TEXT_WAY,
    'cost' => $shipping + MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_HANDLING)));

and the $how_many will be the count of the product(s) quantity in master_categories_id 10 ...

Cool. I'll see if i can play with this and make something happen.

Will keep you informed. Thanks so much for the help.