Gift Certificates and UPS (Cant get to Step 2)

I hope this might be helpful for someone else.

Symptoms are:
Whenever someone has only gift certificates in their shopping cart, they are not able to get past Step 1 of the order process.

Related symptoms:
This typically happens with a module like UPS/UPSXML is enabled and it can't recognize any shipping value since the product in virtual.

Fix:
Go to the gift certificates product in your catalog in the admin. Click edit. Make sure the "Always free shipping" is selected. It's also easiest to select "skip shipping address". Now it will skip the UPS shipping communications and go straight to Step 2 at checkout.

This is of course assuming you are selling these are Online redeemed gift certs. If you intend to sell them as printed certs, you will need to change these settings around to collect the shipping address and charge a shipping fee (make sure there is a weight).

Actually, make sure:

1 Model starts with the word: GIFT

2 Product is marked as: Product is Virtual: YES

Now, there is no need for shipping and it will handle the product properly ...

Thanks, Ajeh.

Yes, that is the setting I changed: "Product is Virtual, skip shipping address".
The certs were already set to the right format (beginning with GIFT and such) otherwise. I don't know if it's just me but the UPS XML mod still tried to respond (returned an error on the site) if I didnt have "Always free shipping" set.

So I'm glad it works on my site and I hope this might be a helpful tip for someone else. Cheers.

Always Free Shipping requires the Free Shipping (freeshipper) Shipping Module ...

When that is used, the other Shipping Modules hide, even when installed ...

When the is not needed, it disables and all of the other Shipping Modules will show ...