Charge for shipping separately later?

I need to set up a cart in a way that just the cost of the items gets charged first and then shipping gets charged later after we can calculate the cost. The reason why is that many items to be shipped will be very heavy and big, so we don't have a way to calculate the shipping cost while they order directly.

Is there a way to do this? What would you recommend if not?

Thanks so much!

Hi Nomi,

I have the same issue with a prospect. I'd be keen to to have a work around for not having shipment cost at time of order. One suggestion is made elsewhere in the forum, see http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72934

Ed

Ed, I saw that thread, too, but I don't see where it has the answer? All I got from it was that this problem might get solved in core code later. Of course I'm not sure what that means -- seems it's "later" now. That thread is a couple years old.

nomi:

I need to set up a cart in a way that just the cost of the items gets charged first and then shipping gets charged later after we can calculate the cost. The reason why is that many items to be shipped will be very heavy and big, so we don't have a way to calculate the shipping cost while they order directly.

Is there a way to do this? What would you recommend if not?

Thanks so much!

This is an excellent way to kill sales. Unless your products are unique and/or you offer considerably better deals than your competitors you'll find that your potential customers will simply take thier business elsewhere rather than go through the process of having to place an order just to get an idea of your shipping costs.

After a couple of decades and hundreds of online purchases, I've not once placed an order where I didn't know what the shipping costs are upfront, and when shopping online I like to make my purchases now. The last thing I'd do is wait a day or two for the merchant to contact me with shipping costs.....

Or, looking at this another way..... If you don't know your products well enough to be able to provide a reasonably accurate shipping cost to any given location then I probably wouldn't want to buy from you in the first place (keep in mind here that I really have no idea what it is you sell). It is just that the idea of buying from someone apparently unfamiliar with thier products never seems like a wise idea to me, so again, I'll be shopping elsewhere.

I sympathise with your plight, and can offer two suggestions that I would find 'acceptable' . 1. Offer pickup only on the large items. or
2. Use a shipping cost a little higher than you you expect the bulk of your large items to be.... You'll gain a little on some sales, lose a little on others. Your customers will pay any shipping cost that they beleive to be 'fair', but they do need this cost upfront... if you cannot provide it, your opposition will :-)

Cheers
Rod

RodG, thanks for counsel - For my project, I've thought about all the stuff you mention & have had all the same ideas; I totally agree with you.

Unfortunately, mine (and I assume the OP's as well), is one of those rare cases where the map doesn't fit the territory -- or the tech doesn't map to real life, if you will. My client runs a store that sells used music equipment -- which is to say, it's basically an antique store: the product is light but large and fragile; often, it requires special packing; and it cannot be prepacked (which would allow you to get a final shipping weight and dimensions) because it's a brick-and-mortar store & these are one-of-a-kind pieces that have to be on the sales floor for people to see. To further confuse matters, a large portion of the clientelle is international. It's pretty much 100% out-of-state. The only good thing is that the customer tends to be determined, and is often used to special shipping arangements (and often asks for his own).

So that's really how it is, and I need to create a system that can deal with that as elegantly as possible.

Of course, not all products are so upredictable. there's plenty that you could easily put a shipping price on. and there are also a lot of products that are "close enough" to do so. So I want to do everything I can to be able to encourage the client to use the shipping -- even if he's guessing on shipping prices. BUT i still need to able to set manual shipping a lot of the time, and reinvoice for this -- and ideally, I'd like to be re-invoicing WITHIN the same e-commerce solution, not just bumping over to paypal & then having to manually update the website to reflect the sale....