AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I'm seeing this in the log:
Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'Ground Shipping'. The remote name could not be resolved: 'www.ups.com'


When this happens, the customer sees this and isn't able to complete the check out process:

Shipping Charge:


There are no shipping methods available to the selected destination(s).

It seems to indicate that your server is not able to connect to UPS server for some reason.
In such cases there are a lot of possibilities to look into. May be something is not right with the network connection at your server. The error says name could not be resolved.... possibly the DNS settings are not correct on your server. May be something is wrong with UPS server ...

In any case it is not likely to be because of something in Ablecommerce.

I get lots of ups error mesages also but not that exact one.

I have the following error message, "Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground' with the same debug data:

- The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request.
- The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.

Is anyone experiencing issues with the UPS API?

Thanks,
Gio

Over the last 5 years, I have seen dozens of short "outages" of all the major carriers (UPS, USPS, and FedEx). A few have lasted as long as a business day. The vast majority last for seconds (one request fails...but the next works).

As a suggestion to AC, it might be worthwhile adding code to retry a failed rate request. Perhaps with a 1 to 3 second delay before the retry. I suspect that would solve nearly all of the rate request failures that customers report.

@AFM great idea!

This has caused many headaches because customers try multiple times to process the order. I normally have duplicate orders because the customer wasn't sure if the order was processed correctly.

Gio

I've noticed failures mostly on the shipping estimator. When it fails, the estimator just sits there with the AJAX "Processing..." message and the background greyed.

You gotta figure if it happens to you, it's happening to the visitors and probably with more frequency

9/9/2008 6:13:19 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground ( see chart )*'. The operation has timed out
9/9/2008 3:16:07 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground ( see chart )*'. The operation has timed out
9/9/2008 12:17:19 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS 3-Day Select®*'. Thread was being aborted.
9/9/2008 12:15:39 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground ( see chart )*'. The operation has timed out
9/9/2008 12:11:59 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground ( see chart )*'. The operation has timed out
9/9/2008 12:06:56 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground ( see chart )*'. The operation has timed out

Must be something that can be fixed.

I think it's a UPS/network issue. It happened sporadically on our Able 5 site, but would work later on. When it happened I used to check a couple of other Able sites I knew were at different hosters and they were having the same problem at the same time.

9/12/2008 10:26:24 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS 3-Day Select®*'. Thread was being aborted.
9/12/2008 10:24:44 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground ( see chart )*'. The operation has timed out


Why does USPS never have network issues?
Has anyone ever contacted UPS to try and figure this out?
Maybe able can tweak some settings?
What kind of havoc is this creating during checkout for our customers?

I get these darn errors about 20 times a week if not more.

I have these same issues:

10/11/2008 4:47:55 PM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground'. The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.; Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
10/11/2008 12:03:42 PM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground'. The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.; Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
10/11/2008 12:03:42 PM Warn Failed to obtain rate quote for the given ship method 'UPS Ground'
10/11/2008 12:27:11 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground'. The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.; Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
10/11/2008 12:03:35 AM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground'. The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.; Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
10/10/2008 11:23:11 PM Warn Error obtaining rate quote for shipping method 'UPS Ground'. The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.; Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.


What kinda resolution can we get here?