AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

We have 3 separate customer groups set up. I have DEFAULT as my retail customers and DEALER1 and DEALER2 as my wholesale customers, each getting different price level that are set up in the SPECIALS tab.
I want to give FREE SHIPPING and COUPONS to my retail (DEFAULT) customers only.
It seems that when a new customer comes to the site, he is not assigned to ANY group unless they create an account. They can not see the free shipping so he gets just the standard calculated shipping.
Not too many customers, myself included, register just to surf a site.
The only way that I can make the shipping methods work for a NON-REGISTERED customer is too assign that method to ALL GROUPS, which in turn, gives the free shipping and Coupons to ALL customers including my DEALER1 and DEALER2 customers which I DO NOT want include since they get special pricing anyway.
How can I set the shipping method up so that just default and unregistered customers get it?

Do you have the Guest Checkout feature enabled? If you are wanting to use Groups for Free Shipping, Coupons, and special dealer pricing, then you will probably need to disable Guest Checkout. It is under the Configure > Store > General page from the menu.

Guest checkout is already disabled.

It seems that when a new customer comes to the site, he is not assigned to ANY group unless they create an account.

This is how it should work if you have Guest checkout disabled. The account is created on the first step of checkout (Billing Info). Then you have your coupon or shipping assigned to the _Default_ group only, so after they fill in the initial billing and create the account, then they should be able to get free shipping on the next page.