Restricted shipping on certain items

[mouse_8b]

Hello,
My company uses AC to both ship nationwide and to offer local home delivery for pet food. For most products it doesn't really matter whether we are delivering it or shipping it. For frozen foods, however, we can only deliver those; we don't ship frozen food since it will likely thaw before it arrives. For all products, we offer free local delivery if the order is over $20. So, if a local customer orders $10 of frozen food and $10 of dry goods, that totals to $20, and the free shipping method is used. However, if a non-local customer comes to our web store, there is nothing stopping him from putting a frozen food into his basket and checking out. Since we can't actually ship those items, I have to call the customer and cancel the order.

How can I keep certain locations from ordering certain items? Warehouses seem like the obvious solution. Indeed, I can add all of the frozen products to a warehouse and restrict that warehouse to local delivery. However, under this setup, if a local customer orders $10 of frozen food and $10 of dry goods, that is calculated as 2 shipments that are both under the minimum order amount, and that customer is not offered free delivery.

What would really help is if AC could realize that 2 warehouses have the same address and combine them into 1 shipment. Or if some section of a warehouse could have different rules, like a sub-warehouse.

Any ideas?

[AbleMods]

Able isn't really built well to handle your specific situation. As you've seen, warehouses work but only to a point.

Anything beyond that would require several customizations. I'm working on a similar situation right now where the store wants to offer shoppers the ability to place a pickup order or a shipping order but not both in the same basket. Their production processes can't handle pickup and shipping products in the same order, so we have to force the shopper down one road or another as soon as they add their first item to the basket.