AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

This might have been covered already, but we would like to use only the zip code to give an estimate for shipping on items. Is this possible?

It depends on the shipping methods. Some of carriers require more address information than just the zip code. For example, FedEx requires the zip code and the city. Even then, the estimate will often be higher than the actual cost (which is based on the street address, city, and zip).

You could subscribe to a zip code service and then add code that looks up a city based on the zip code. But that will probably lead to even worse estimates. Many zip codes touch multiple cities and the the shipping cost to each can vary quite a bit. If your code simply picked the first city in the list, the estimate would be wrong quite often.

There are many reasons for making country, province and city fields required for shipping estimator.

* Firstly, the shipping estimate needs to work for countries other than US.
* Secondly, some of the carriers require more address information than just the zip-code. For example FedEx requires zip-code and city.
* Thirdly, and most importantly, the shipping estimator can not work correctly with shipping zones defined in the store if zip-code is the only information available to determine the applicable zone.

The reason we asked this was actually because of Joe's website: http://www.solunar.com/GPS-Automotive-C42.aspx

He said he was running RC3 - which only required zip. I just did a test calc on his website and was able to pull:

UPS Ground
$12.38
FedEx 2day
$40.23
UPS 2nd Day Air®
$32.87
FedEx Standard Overnight
$84.88
UPS Next Day Air®
$86.59
UPS 3-Day Select®
$26.00
UPS Next Day Air Saver®
$79.53
UPS Next Day Air® Early AM®
$124.92

Currently we only use USPS and UPS - which both only require zip code.

You can probably use the shipping estimator from RC3. I can't guarantee it will work, but it's worth a try.
We fixed the shipping estimator in the final version because we were getting 2-3 complaints each week that it didn't work properly.

By the way, I think that USPS requires a country code. It's also not going to work with multiple warehouses, shipping zones, any postal code outside of the US, and there are probably other things I can't think of right now.

Good Luck,
Katie

What would be nice is once the customer is logged in or the address is saved into a cookie that it shrinks the thing down and lists what is selected in small print with the option to change it. That way all the info is there for new customers but isnt a big ugly box for returning customers.

You're better off with the AC7 Final version of estimator.

Joe, are you using the one from RC3 or the final build with un-wanted fields taken out?

RC3, Solunar.com hasn't been upgraded yet

Based on what Katie said, doesn't sound like removing the extra fields is such a good idea. My estimator still hangs every so often with the AJAX "processing..." message.

Plus it has the All Zones bug although I believe that's in the classes and not the page code.

I've taken off all but the country and zip code since we use only UPS and didn't have a problem with rates- I just kept taking off a field one at a time and checking. I took off all but zip for a client and warned him he might have rate problems, but so far he is satisfied with the rates he is getting. I'm not sure yet that it's wise to do that, but it works for him.

Maybe if your select USA as your country then it have only zip and country? If you select another country it add the city, (mot other counties don't use state per say) Are you sure Fedex needs city?

FedEx will return a quote if you do not include the city, but it will be high. Sometimes very high (like 2x).

afm wrote:FedEx will return a quote if you do not include the city, but it will be high. Sometimes very high (like 2x).

couldn't you use a city zip code look up and prevent the quotes from being to high?

No, for the same reason FedEx does not. Many zip codes cover multiple cities.