Disable flat rate per item?

I have enabled the flat rate shipping option for my store. In most cases this works just fine, however; in a few instances items are either too heavy or too bulky to send using this flat rate. In these cases I would like to disable the "flat rate" shipping option. Is there a way to do this?

Ken B.

What happens when the customers buy some products that should be the flat rate and some that should be charged for separately?

For those that should have their own charges ... how do you want this amount calculated?

I imagine that if any of the excluded items are in the cart then flat rate would not be available. Calculations from UPS or USPS should then be used (my other shipping options) based on total weight and destination.

Ken B.

So you are saying if cart has regular products, shipping cost is flat rate for whole order ...

If cart only has special shipping products use USPS and/or UPS ...

If cart is mixed, meaning it has even 1 of the special shipping products, turn off flat and only offer UPS and USPS based on the total weight of the whole cart?

Do you have anything that "distinquishes" these special shipping products from other products?

While this would require some coding ... assuming there is a way to identify the differences ... perhaps this idea work a little better ...

All products have 0 weight except those that require UPS and/or USPS

0 weight is set to mean NOT Free Shipping in the Shipping/Packaging

When 0 weight, flat runs

When not 0 weight, the Handling charge for the USPS and UPS is the same as Flat to cover those products ... and then the calculation is made on products with weight in normal fashion for UPS and USPS

If that would work ... then this could be customized to run your shipping in this manner with some custom coding for turning ON/OFF the flat, usps and ups shipping modules ...

Hmm... I think I would still need the actual weights for the other items, just in case the customer wanted to choose a different shipping method other than flat rate, which is possible. Some of my customers are very picky about how an item is shipped to them it has to be UPS and never USPS or vica-versa. I would hate to foot the shipping bill to canada charged at zero pounds that actually weighs 10 pounds! Maybe I need to rethink my whole shipping strategy.

Ken B.

This could also be done ... but now you would need to get into more extensive coding to determin when the products_weight should or should not be used on a product for the Flat + USPS or FLAT + UPS ...

Setting up a new field on the products table could indicate which method to use ... but then you need a new calculation on products_weight so that UPS/USPS is not adding all the products_weight together to get the UPS/USPS quote on the products for flat ...

The other way that I described, used the built in products_weight as the trigger ... where IF there is a weight ... run USPS/UPS ... if there is no weight ... run FLAT ...

Either way could be custom coded ... depends on how much your client wants to spend to accomplish this ...

Well, unfortunatly my client is myself(he's a very unreasonable boss!), and i do need to get this finished fairly quickly. I imagine it would be best to use the method you outlined, and deal with orders that fall outside the norm on a case by case basis. There is no need to put too much time into coding for cases that happen less then 1% of the time. With that said, as PHP is not the language I normally would use, I will get started tinkering with this in the sandbox. Thanks for all your time and advice!

Ken B.