Can Able Gold automatically classify an address?

[Little John]

On our site some customers have figured out that if they check the box indicating that an address is commercial it will result in lower shipping rates. After talking to UPS they said that the UPS API can't automatically classify the address but the Rating & Service Tool can. This seems like a problem that has probably already been solved by someone in the Able community.

Is there a way to get Able to classify the address as residential or commercial so we can remove the checkbox from the checkout billing page?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Naveed]

Sorry, there is no automatic way, it has to be done manually by the customer to indicate about each address while editing/inputting the address.

[compunerdy]

We need a option to just not offer it and have residential as default.

[SteveHiner]

So our only options are:
1) Let the customer decide so some customer intentionally mark it as commercial to save shipping and we lose money on the sale.
a) Optionally contact customers and cancel their order if they marked it incorrectly thus likely losing the sale.
2) Force it to always be residential so business customers get overcharged on shipping, abandon their cart and buy it from someone else.

It seems like it should be possible to automate this. Are there any plug-ins that do this or should I write one?

[SteveHiner]

Looks like this will be a good starting point: http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/bussol ... SolViewAll

[Katie]

We are actively working on upgrading our UPS integration for the next version. We are also working on address validation, but I'm not sure if the one you linked above is different than the one that is in testing now. I will need to check on that.

Remember that you can edit an order. It doesn't have to be cancelled. If the customer knowingly checked the box because they figured out they could save a few dollars on shipping, it doesn't mean you can't fix the shipping amount and have them pay it before fulfilling the order.

In our last version, Gold R10, we added support for ShipStation. If you use their service, I believe that you can get UPS's discounted rates. It might be worth looking into.

[calvis]

The last time I checked UPS address verification was not able to validate missing apt numbers.

If you are willing to lay out some coin https://smartystreets.com/ has the best and most detailed API for address correction. Well worth the money in our opinion.

[Naveed]

UPS street level address verification API can help auto classify the addresses as business/residential. If anyone want this feature then please use the Uservoice and vote for it.

We need a option to just not offer it and have residential as default.

In the meantime you can easily change the existing implementation and hide the option and you can update it to mark all addresses as residential as default. You can do so by editing the following edit address aspx pages:

/Checkout/EditBillAddress.aspx
/Checkout/EditAddress.aspx
/Members/EditMyAddress.aspx

Set the Address.Residence field value to 'false' as under:

For example change from

Code: Select all

address.Residence = !IsBusiness.Checked;

to

Code: Select all

address.Residence = false;

[compunerdy]

And I have done that in the past Naveed but the list of "fixes" I need to do at every upgrade is getting way too long when you guys could just add it as a option in the backend.

[Katie]

We don't just add new features every time they are asked for in the forums. In the past, we found that too much time was being spent on things that only a handful of customers wanted. That is why we implemented the feature voting system via Uservoice. Now, we can spend our development resources on the ideas and requests that will benefit the many instead of the few. Please make your requests via Uservoice if you want them added to future versions.