USPS and ABLE don't agree

[milstencil]

Able released a patch for Gold but not for 7.
When can we expect a patch as our site depends on USPS rates for service???
Able 7.04 build 13424
I'm not happy when we receive the following message from our customer:
What up with this message?

"No suitable shipping method available to ship the products in your cart. Please contact the merchant for assistance in completing your order."

How do you do business? I would like to complete my order, please advise.

This is unacceptable as there has been sufficient notice from the USPS to get this done before they introduce new rates and services.
Rick

[compunerdy]

viewtopic.php?f=65&t=17475

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello Tim,

The patch for 7.0.x is updated on the help website. Given the terrible documentation with the USPS documentation on their new API, there wasn't even close to suitable notification from USPS. We had to put the patches together by trial and error which was very time consuming. Development worked some double shifts and over the weekend to get it completed.

http://help.ablecommerce.com/upgrades/a ... h_2013.htm

[mfreeze]

I have applied this fix and it did not work for 7.0.7...............

Help!

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello Mary,

As I understand it you'll need to reselect the shipping methods, please try to provide some additional information to help us help you should this not prove successful.

[Naveed]

I have applied this fix and it did not work for 7.0.7...............

http://help.ablecommerce.com/upgrades/a ... h_2013.htm
1. For 7.0.7 replace the csv file with the new.

2. Restart IIS

3. Update the live and test url addresses from USPS configure page as follows:
Live Mode URL: http://production.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll
Test Server URL: http://stg-production.shippingapis.com/ShippingApi.dll

4. Delete / remove your existing USPS shipping methods/services and reconfigure the new services.

[Naveed]

In case it do not solve your issue, post some details, like error messages, or enable debug mode and post the sent and received log messages.

[mfreeze]

Following is the relevant section of the log.

Send: API=RateV3&XML=<?xml version="1.0"?><RateV3Request USERID="512EZSOX1396"><Package ID="0"><Service>ALL</Service><ZipOrigination>33410</ZipOrigination><ZipDestination>08803</ZipDestination><Pounds>0</Pounds><Ounces>6.0</Ounces><Container>FLAT RATE ENVELOPE</Container><Size>REGULAR</Size><Machinable>true</Machinable></Package></RateV3Request>

Receive: <?xml version="1.0"?>
<RateV3Response><Package ID="0"><ZipOrigination>33410</ZipOrigination><ZipDestination>08803</ZipDestination><Pounds>0</Pounds><Ounces>6.0</Ounces><Container>FLAT RATE ENVELOPE</Container><Size>REGULAR</Size><Machinable>TRUE</Machinable><Zone>6</Zone><Postage CLASSID="3"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt;</MailService><Rate>27.05</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="2"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Hold For Pickup</MailService><Rate>27.05</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="55"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Flat Rate Boxes</MailService><Rate>39.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="56"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Flat Rate Boxes Hold For Pickup</MailService><Rate>39.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="13"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>19.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="27"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Flat Rate Envelope Hold For Pickup</MailService><Rate>19.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="30"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Legal Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>19.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="31"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Legal Flat Rate Envelope Hold For Pickup</MailService><Rate>19.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="62"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Padded Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>19.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="63"><MailService>Priority Mail Express 1-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Padded Flat Rate Envelope Hold For Pickup</MailService><Rate>19.95</Rate><CommitmentDate>2013-08-01</CommitmentDate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="1"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt;</MailService><Rate>6.20</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="22"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Large Flat Rate Box</MailService><Rate>16.85</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="17"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Medium Flat Rate Box</MailService><Rate>12.35</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="28"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Small Flat Rate Box</MailService><Rate>5.80</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="16"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>5.60</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="44"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Legal Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>5.75</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="29"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Padded Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>5.95</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="38"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Gift Card Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>5.60</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="42"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Small Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>5.60</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="40"><MailService>Priority Mail 2-Day&lt;sup&gt;&#8482;&lt;/sup&gt; Window Flat Rate Envelope</MailService><Rate>5.60</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="0"><MailService>First-Class Mail&lt;sup&gt;&#174;&lt;/sup&gt; Parcel</MailService><Rate>2.58</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="0"><MailService>First-Class Mail&lt;sup&gt;&#174;&lt;/sup&gt; Large Envelope</MailService><Rate>1.92</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="4"><MailService>Standard Post&lt;sup&gt;&#174;&lt;/sup&gt;</MailService><Rate>6.15</Rate></Postage><Postage CLASSID="6"><MailService>Media Mail&lt;sup&gt;&#174;&lt;/sup&gt;</MailService><Rate>2.53</Rate></Postage><Postage

[NC Software]

I followed the upgrade instructions, deleted the USPS methods after restarting IIS and added USPS Priority Mail and it is not showing as a ship method.

I'm using 7.0.7.

[NC Software]

How do we confirm the USPS csv file was read in? Do you all display a USPS version number or something in the admin that we can verify we're up to date? Please consider this in the future if not so we can verify our configs/data.

[zanzor]

After Able Mods installed the update for our company using 7.0.7 it appeared to still be broke.

But what has happened in our case we used USPS Priority, in the past there was one basic priority option,
but in place of the ONE there is not MORE.
to fix this we had to add
Priority 1-day
Priority 2-day
Priority 3-day

It appears as if the USPS server comes back with the quote for the proper one and only displays that one based upon where they live in the US.


Thanks for the patch to fix the broken USPS shipping methods, althou it did come a day late after loosing 50% of our sales for that day.

In the future is it possible to have a mailing list created that you could email all of your clients about important updates in the progress like this, if I would have got an email before this happened I could had created a flat rate shipping method for that day until the patch came out.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello,

Seems USPS priority is having it's priority adjusted and that is one of the possible reasons we've had two of these 'name changes' inside of 7 months.

This was added to the instructions on the help site:

IMPORTANT: When you add new shipping methods, you'll notice that each method will now have 6 variants, USPS will return one of those depending on the scheduled delivery date calculation between the origin and destination zip codes. Possible values: “1-day”, “2-day”, “3-day”, “military”, “apo”, etc. So, it's recommended to configure all variants for a service/shipping method you want to configure.

[NC Software]

Mike,

It's not "recommended" it is REQUIRED that you add these 1-day 2-day options for it to work. I added them and it now works.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Test post to check email notifications.

[foodsleuth]

I can ONLY get 1 method to show in the shopping cart, and that is Priority 1-day, I've entered all varients from Express, 1, 2, 3, APO and DPO (dont even know what that is). How do I get the other methods to show? I've tested shipping to various locations including California, Alaska.. only the one rate is returned.
The error log shows this error: destination.PostalCode is empty or invalid length , the postal code is correct.
FYI, I'm on version 7.0.5
International methods work just fine those are installed and tested. But standard Priority to U.S. destinations only returns Priority 1-Day, no other services.

[NC Software]

USPS is only going to return the option based on the amount of time it takes in transit. You'll have to implement all of the day methods so USPS can return the one it will use.

This is going to be ugly and I'd really like AC to strip the transit time. Customers are going to expect to receive the order in this amount of time as they cannot disassociate time to ship + transit time. When they see 1 day they will expect it in 1 day.

[david-ebt]

One option you have to fix this is when you name the shipping method. You have the ability to set the name of the Shipping Methods as you enter them. So the service can called Priority Mail 1-Day but you can name it Priority Mail and strip the transit time off yourself.

This will mean you have six methods in your admin list that all look the same, but since it looks like USPS will only return one of these options, your customers will just see Priority Mail in their shipping options list.

[david-ebt]

I can ONLY get 1 method to show in the shopping cart, and that is Priority 1-day, I've entered all varients from Express, 1, 2, 3, APO and DPO (dont even know what that is). How do I get the other methods to show? I've tested shipping to various locations including California, Alaska.. only the one rate is returned.
The error log shows this error: destination.PostalCode is empty or invalid length , the postal code is correct.

It looks like USPS will only return the best service it will guarantee. If you want Priority Mail options to display the same to your customer, just give each shipping method the same name.

[foodsleuth]

It's still wrong. It does not cost $16.10 to ship from zip code 95030 TO zip code 95031. It is returning the most expensive service only for 1 lb packaging going from and to the same town.
It does not matter if I ship to California, or Dayton Ohio, Or Maine, it only returns 1 method "priority mail - 1 Day" at a rate that is crazy high.

[david-ebt]

It does not cost $16.10 to ship from zip code 95030 TO zip code 95031. It is returning the most expensive service only for 1 lb packaging going from and to the same town.

If you go to the USPS online calculator, it will return a cost of $16.05 for shipping a 1lb package from 95030 to 95031 via Priority Mail Express. The rate for Priority Mail is $5.60. They both only return the 1-Day rate.

[NC Software]

Don't confused priority mail EXPRESS with priority mail. One is EXPRESS MAIL the other is not.

[Katie]

In case anyone is interested, here is a link to the USPS FAQ on the changes with Priority mail services.

https://www.usps.com/making-priority-mail-better.htm

I especially like the answer to this FAQ:

2) Why did USPS® make this change?
Research has shown that our service names are confusing for customers, so in an effort to make shipping with USPS as easy as possible, we’re simplifying the names of our services.

[foodsleuth]

Don't confused priority mail EXPRESS with priority mail. One is EXPRESS MAIL the other is not.

Ok, clearly that is it. And to Katie who posted the note USPS changed it to make it clearer............ Oh yeah, this was a success........
Thanks to all, I now see the error of my ways. It was just so simple before they made it easy <G>

[david-ebt]

A customer will only see Military or DPO if their address is an APO/FPO/DPO address. If you enter in APO as the state and 09002 as the zip that should give you a Priority Mail Express result. The rate on the USPS site for that is $35.90.

They'll also only see 1-Day or 2-Day or 3-Day if USPS offers that guaranteed service between the ship-from and ship-to zip codes.

[NC Software]

I took the advice of someone above and remove those suffixes in the ship method names so customers won't see any of that beyond priority mail or priority mail express