Stamps.com integration - Couple small bugs need addressing

Ok. So I was a little concerned about the tracking number actually getting to the customers once it posts back to the zen-cart.

So I did a little test.. I logged in as one of the customer accounts that was shipped via stamps.com to see if the order actually shows shipped and it shows the tracking number. Because it certainly isn't emailing the customer via the zen-cart because it has the big red x under customer notified.. So I figured well at least the customer can access the info if they log into the web store.. WRONG

While The order does show shipped to anyone in the admin section with the tracking number. The customer has no idea of this. I logged into multiple customer's accounts. And all of them show shipped on my side.. But when they go to get the order status.. It says Processing still! And there is no tracking number ! This was one of the main reasons for this implementation. My shipping manager doesn't have time to feed back tracking numbers for 40 orders a day. Yes they are posting back to zen cart but only the admin can view them. That is totally POINTLESS! The customer needs this info not the admin. So guess what I have had to do. Go to each and every order and copy the tracking number and paste it below to actually change the status and email the customer. This issue needs to be addressed immediately. I do not have time to copy and paste 40 to 50 orders a day. When the software is suppose to do this! Its still importing ups orders and my shipping manager still has to look at every order to see what shipping option they selected. I repeat.. This info needs to be available to the customers. Somebody back me up on this.. Login to a customers account that shows shipped and see for yourself!

Customers order status

Status History & Comments Date Order Status Comments
09/29/2010 Processing

Order status via control panel
09/29/2010 15:19:33 Shipped Shipped on 09/29/2010 via USPS [USPS First Class], Tracking number 910101052129782203xxxx

Chuck. We do appreciate your concern at attempts on this matter. But lets get some of these bugs addressed! If you need some new programmers there are plenty out there looking for jobs that could nail these problems quickly!

I logged in to a couple orders and all the order comments are displayed. The final comment has the order tracking number and shows a status of shipped which was automatically entered by stamps.com. While the shipping notice is not sent by ZC it is sent by stamps.com with the tracking info. I'm not sure why your site is working differently. I guess I should consider myself lucky.

btw I do agree that these things should be implemented correctly and be simpler for us to use.

badarac:

I logged in to a couple orders and all the order comments are displayed. The final comment has the order tracking number and shows a status of shipped which was automatically entered by stamps.com. While the shipping notice is not sent by ZC it is sent by stamps.com with the tracking info. I'm not sure why your site is working differently. I guess I should consider myself lucky.

btw I do agree that these things should be implemented correctly and be simpler for us to use.

did you log in as the customer? Because I get all the info when I login the admin control panel. But When I log in as a customer it reads as processing still.. Did you change yours to read shipped instead of Delivered? As thats why I have my status update too.. Shipped

roberttimmons:

did you log in as the customer? Because I get all the info when I login the admin control panel. But When I log in as a customer it reads as processing still.. Did you change yours to read shipped instead of Delivered? As thats why I have my status update too.. Shipped

Yes I logged in as the customer, yes I changed my store to have an order status of shipped instead of delivered, and no I didn't update the status manually.

badarac:

Yes I logged in as the customer, yes I changed my store to have an order status of shipped instead of delivered, and no I didn't update the status manually.

Ok thanks for that info. When you look at the customer order via super orders details You do have the red x next to customer notified when stamps.com posted it back to zen cart right? Or is yours actually notifying the customer as well?

Here's what shows in the logged in customer order status. I deleted the CC transaction info.

Payment Status: Completed
AVS Code: AVSADDR: Y, AVSZIP: Y, IAVS: N
CVV2 Code: Y
Amount: 30.00 USD
10/04/2010 Shipped Shipped on 10/04/2010 via USPS [USPS Priority], Tracking number 9101010521297820017990

badarac:

Here's what shows in the logged in customer order status. I deleted the CC transaction info.

Payment Status: Completed
AVS Code: AVSADDR: Y, AVSZIP: Y, IAVS: N
CVV2 Code: Y
Amount: 30.00 USD
10/04/2010 Shipped Shipped on 10/04/2010 via USPS [USPS Priority], Tracking number 9101010521297820017990

Ok .. This is interesting.. One more quick thing if you have a sec..

While you are in the customer's My account section. It shows the previous orders and the status there.. I just noticed that mine does indeed say shipped there for the customers.. But that's all it says.

But then if I click the view button next to that.. where it gives you further order detail.

Under status and history & comments

That's where I see the processing Order Status... But still no tracking info anywhere on anything.. This was on a paypal order if that makes any difference to anything.

EDIT: - Its only doing it on the paypal orders.. Mabye since paypal places back status to the order it must add some sort of flag to the order that keeps it from updating the status history and comments.. My credit card orders do indeed get posted back to the customer's order status..

But we still need to work on getting this tracking info sent as an email. The customer should not have to log back in to find out if there order shipped.. I will have to figure out the paypal issue on my own.

Thanks for helping me troubleshoot this badarac

roberttimmons:

EDIT: - Its only doing it on the paypal orders.. Mabye since paypal places back status to the order it must add some sort of flag to the order that keeps it from updating the status history and comments.. My credit card orders do indeed get posted back to the customer's order status..

But we still need to work on getting this tracking info sent as an email. The customer should not have to log back in to find out if there order shipped.. I will have to figure out the paypal issue on my own.

Thanks for helping me troubleshoot this badarac

No problem. I don't get a lot of Paypal orders so I might not see that. I can't imagine why that would make a difference though. Good luck!

Small thing to watch out for: on a couple of installations, the first "Refresh" didn't work in the stamps.com local executable; I had to select the "Zen Cart/Not Printed" on the left hand side (instead of "All Profiles"). Don't give up just because you get a "No new orders" dialog the first time. You may even need to do a Manage/ then edit your profile and click at the link on the bottom that says something like "Get all orders (slow)".

Hi Badarac,

We've finally received some info relating to Syntax from our dev team for your question back in Sept. Sorry for the lengthy time it took to get a response.

Stamps.com shold recognize the default shipping status codes used by each shopping cart. So long as a ZenCart customer does not change these defaults, mail classes should be imported.

If the default shipping status codes have been modified in any way, you will have to manually edit the mail class on orders that are pulled into the Stamps.com software.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
Eric
Stamps.com

StampsCom:

Hi Badarac,

We've finally received some info relating to Syntax from our dev team for your question back in Sept. Sorry for the lengthy time it took to get a response.

Stamps.com shold recognize the default shipping status codes used by each shopping cart. So long as a ZenCart customer does not change these defaults, mail classes should be imported.

If the default shipping status codes have been modified in any way, you will have to manually edit the mail class on orders that are pulled into the Stamps.com software.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
Eric
Stamps.com

Well I was hoping for something a little more specific than that. What are they testing for? The USPS delivery method name? The value of a DB variable? What values are they expecting for Zen Cart? How can I check my install to see if me settings are what is expected?

As it stands now orders import in batch mode. For each order I must select the shipping method (which I must to each order in Zen Cart to find), adjust the weight of the package since that doesn't seem to come across either, and then print the labels.

The order is then updated in the comments with the tracking info and an e-mail is sent from stamps.com to the customer with tracking info. Even though I have a package tracking add-on installed I cannot add a trackable link to the order so my customers can login and track their order. There is also no order shipped e-mail sent from Zen Cart to my customer.

All in all a pretty sloppy implementation which is just moderately better than cut and paste. I don't mean to be harsh but the settings file that we have to update for the order status could be used to map the other settings which you expect to be defaults At the very least if I knew what may have been modified I could make a decision if I want to set things back to defaults or live with the batch processing the way it is.

I appreciate your participation here but you really need to give your programmers a little whack for us.

I don't understand why Stamps.com need to access the ShippingZZencart.php file 195 times every 2 hours.

Still waiting on resolution to Incident:100831-002082 opened on 8/31/2010. Sounds to me like customer service/support takes a backseat to issuing code updates on a daily basis that have no changes other than the version number. OR the programmers are 3rd party contractors who are doing most of their work for someone else. That would explain why it takes days for someone to return a phone call.

badarac:

Well I was hoping for something a little more specific than that. What are they testing for? The USPS delivery method name? The value of a DB variable? What values are they expecting for Zen Cart? How can I check my install to see if me settings are what is expected?

What Eric is saying here, is that if you look at ShippingZZencart.php at the function PrepareZencartOrderStatusFilter() it builds a query using the default values from Zen Cart.

Pending = 1
Processing = 2
Delivered = 3
Update = 4

If you look in admin->Localization->Orders Status, and click each of these values, you'll see in the URL the parameter oID, which should correspond to the numbers shown above. If they're different, you will need to change ShippingZZencart.php function PrepareZencartOrderStatusFilter().

Hi RobertTimmons,

Default behavior for ZenCart is to pull down orders that have been marked as "Processing." Once the customer processes the label in our Stamps.com software, the tracking number will be posted-back and the order status will be changed to "Delivered."

If you have Email Notifications turned on inside the profile options, an email will be sent by Stamps.com once the label is processed.

This should not interfere with your webstore’s ability to send an email -- if you are experiencing problems, there could be other issues causing the problem. We'll have to ask our dev team about the tracking info only showing up in the backend as this should not be the expected behavior.

We definitely need to research this problem more as the problem could be due to customizations that have been made to the shopping cart.

On the differences you noted with PayPal vs. CC for payment method, this should have no bearing on the information we post back.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
Eric
Stamps.com

Hi Badarac,

A "whack" will be given! I can certainly understand your frustration with this process and would like to apologize for having to deal with these issues.

The whole implementation has been an eye-opening experience for us as Zen Cart customers such as yourself have really found a lot of areas of improvement with the Stamps.com software.

But we're committed to getting the bugs out and making sure the integration works very well.

Let me see if I can get more specific answers for you.

Thanks!
Eric
Stamps.com

swguy:

What Eric is saying here, is that if you look at ShippingZZencart.php at the function PrepareZencartOrderStatusFilter() it builds a query using the default values from Zen Cart.

Pending = 1
Processing = 2
Delivered = 3
Update = 4

If you look in admin->Localization->Orders Status, and click each of these values, you'll see in the URL the parameter oID, which should correspond to the numbers shown above. If they're different, you will need to change ShippingZZencart.php function PrepareZencartOrderStatusFilter().

Actually that's not the settings we were discussing. Those settings are configured in the stamps settings file and I am receiving orders. The problem is that the orders do not contain the mail class selected and total weight of the shipment. These apparently rely on some values in the order which at this time are a mystery to us all.

StampsCom:

If you have Email Notifications turned on inside the profile options, an email will be sent by Stamps.com once the label is processed.

I think what people are voicing here is that this is not acceptable behavior. E-mails sent to customers from ZC stores have a customized look, logo, etc. for each store and match other e-mails coming from each person's store(registrations, order confirmation and all status updates). The "item has shipped" e-mail with delivery confirmation needs to be sent through the ZC interface. I'm sure it's very easy for stamps.com to send it through the existing stamps.com system, but that is not a good, consistent, experience for the customer. The other problem with doing it that way is that there is no confirmation for the store owner that the e-mail was actually sent, nor does the owner have any control over what is said in that e-mail.

UPDATE: My problem still exists where I cannot pull in orders any more because of receiving an error from the stamps.com code while trying to do so. The stamps.com team is working on it and I've received a couple of calls needing additional info and I appreciate that they are trying and I hope they find a solution soon.

I too have recently started to use stamps.com. I have sent 2 orders so far and it seems to work well. I really would want these emails to be relayed out of my Zen Cart store as the post above indicates. I want the experience for the shopper to be seamless. When they start getting emails coming from all over it gets confusing to the customer as to whom they are dealing with. I want all communication to come or to be relayed through my store. Anything that can be done to improve this would be greatly appreciated.

glad to see this thread is still going and we are all still working toward the same end goal. Today we got this error

Stamps.com will not let me get the wholevacuums mailing infor tell me this This webstore misbehaved and was disabled. Reason: TooManyFailedJobs

So i went ahead and downloaded the latest plugin. - will update back