international shipping quandry

I have a bit of a quandry regarding international shipping, specifically to Canada from the US. I have mulled over this for quite some time and have not been able to come up with a satisfactory solution. My example may be a bit lengthy, but I will try to simplify it as much as possible. If anyone has a suggestion or idea I would appreciate the input.

I realize that I can simply turn on Canadian shipping in my UPS shipping module but here is the problem.....

The nature of my business is commercial fire protection and life safety equipment. Most of the items on my site can be shipped across international borders by simply placing it in a box and addressing it, however, there are certain items which are difficult at best to do this with. For example, Fire Extinguishers. Fire Extinguishers are a pressurized vessel and the amount of restrictions on shipping these makes it somewhat impractical to even attempt. Also, Ionization Smoke Detectors contain and operate on a radioactive isotope and the restrictions regarding that are pretty extreme.

I guess what I am looking for, is a way to restrict shipping based on either product category or even by item. That way, if a persons shopping cart contains any items which would be considered as a restricted item, they would get a message that this item cannot be shipped to their address but would allow the balance of the cart to procede to checkout.

For example, customer "A" has 3 fire hoses and and a hose rack in their cart, they can proceed to checkout.

However....

If customer "A" has 3 fire hoses and an ABC fire extinguisher, they would get a message stating that the pressurized vessel cannot be shipped internationally, and they would have the opportunity to remove that item before proceeding to checkout.

I realize this sounds horribly complex, but it is what I am stumbling upon, any ideas or input is appreciated. I have a lot of customers from Canada abandoning carts because I currently do not offer any shipping to Canada as I have not yet figured out a satisfactory solution.....

Thanks in advance,

Nelson

This can be tested with:

$chk_cat = $_SESSION['cart']->in_cart_check('master_categories_id','27');

where 27 is the master_categories_id for the Products ...

You can check as many Categories that you need to with this and then, if the count is >= 1 add checks in the shopping_cart and checkout_shipping to warn or prevent checkout by international customers ... plus, include blocks in the shipping modules themselves ...

Thanks!

I'm certainly no code guru, but will look at this and see what i can come up with. Can you please direct me as to which actual modules to look for this in? As I am using the UPS shipping module, that one is pretty obvious, but which modules would i need to look at as far as the shopping cart is concerned?

Also, I am using PayPal Express as a checkout/payment method in addition to authorize.net and 'check/money order', which bypasses some of the shopping cart screens, is this a special consideration that I would need to address?

Thanks!

I would have to go through and test all the code for this ...

But most likely you need to test this in the header_php.php files for the pages where you want to post a notice about the products and then add the checks on the checkout pages where the validations are done for the cart content based on the current shipping address ...

For the shopping_cart, you can add a message regardless of the customer address, as you don't really know their shipping address ... or check the shipping address, if set and they go back to shop and adjust the message or only display if at that point the shipping address is international ...

OK, thanks, i'm going to try and follow the checkout process through and see where the most logical place is to test for this. My real concern is that by using PayPal Express, the customer can actually checkout before an address is entered, thus, allowing an international customer to checkout before an international address is recognised... One could obviously post notices all over the various pages and product descriptions, but we all know that there are those who simply do not read and/or follow instructions very carefully and I can see a problem with that in the future.... I'll poke around a bit and see what i can come up with tho... should be interesting....

Nelson

ok.... i have a small update.....

As suspected, a customer which is not logged on(a guest) can proceed to checkout with PayPal Express without selecting a shipping option or a country/state/province for a shipping estimate.... This creates a problem as a customer from Canada can now proceed to pay with PayPal and the shipping address is not known until paypal kicks the info back, by then it is too late because the payment is processed(if i am understanding the structure correctly)....

A simple "workaround" for this is to require the customers to be logged in, thus generating an account, before prices are seen and before items can be added to the cart.... A small inconvenience for "window shoppers" but it would allow the product category to be verified by the shopping cart prior to payment selection...

I'll keep poking around, any input would be appreciated...

Nelson

I have exactly the same issue, where some products need to be restricted to domestic shipping only.

I am not much of a coder, and have found the structure of the php in this system a bit befuddling. Is there any cut-and-dried way to get this done?

Also, I expect 95% of my business to be US and Canada, but I would like to be able to accept orders from anywhere and then have the opportunity to manually deal with shipping and export issues for anyone outside those countries.

I am using PayPal express checkout, and would be willing to simply "authorize" payments in order to get the info cleared (any way to do that by "zone" or country only?)... and then if in a country where my known rates would not apply I want to be able to contact the customer and give them the final shipping/handling costs and get them to approve that before finalizing the payment. Any way to do that???

Thanks a lot.