USPS Shipping Plugin HikaShop

-- HikaShop version -- : 3.1.1

Hi Guys,

Question on how to best explain shipping choices to the customer..

So, the reason for this question is that I offer 2 USPS Shipping Classes during checkout. The problem is that I need to explain to the customer what each shipping choice is so that they choose the appropriate choice.The problem is that since this is one plugin which in turn serves more than one Postage class, it will display each available class which can display both choices even though one of the choice is not going to be the proper choice (This will make more sense as I continue). This can become confusing for the customer because what displays on the front end is 2 different prices, one which would be the proper choice, the second while they can still choose it, would be incorrect and would have to have to be changed on the backend should they choose it. The problem is that while setting up the plugin, there is no way to describe which they should choose because the details will display in duplicate. See Attached Screenshot for a better understanding.

There is also no way for me to properly set the proper rate to include Insurance with out making the price of the other shipping option completely wrong.

So here is the Scenario.

All my items Ship either First Class with Insurance (in which I add the cost of Insurance by adding $1.89 to the Generic Configuration Price entry). This will ensure that all First Class Packages upto 13 Oz will always include the $1.89 to the First Class Rate returned by USPS.

However, if a package is over 13 Oz, then the Postage Class will switch based on the configuration to Priority Mail Flat Rate. The issue is that Priority Mail Flat Rate Already includes insurance at no additional cost. So USPS will return a the Priority Rate but because I am specifying it to add $1.89 to cover insurance for Flat Rate Postage, that $1.89 is now being added on top of the Priority Mail Postage Rate thereby over charging the customer for the Priority Mail Postage Rate.

If I try to use the Description area to explain the details of the rate, because this is one plugin displaying both Postage rates, the description is displayed twice looking silly (again the Screenshot will make this more clear to understand).

So my question is, do you guys have any tricks or suggestions on how to better set this up to avoid the over charging the customer (or if they choose the wrong option under charging the customer causing me to have to change and either refund or charge the customer more and avoid the confusion with the way it will display any help info I would write?

So how would one correctly set up the USPS Shipping Plugin for this with out causing these issues? I considered setting up a second "Manual Shipping Plugin, but since even the Priority Mail Flat Rate postage rates are variable, I can't see how that would work either because the customer could still choose the wrong rate causing me to have to adjust the rates prior to shipping.

Does this make sense? Can anyone make a good recommendation how best to set this up to work around this issue when you have multiple shipping
I hope the Screenshot helps to explain the issue. I just am not sure how to work around this.

Please let me know if I need to provide more details. Right now, this is my only deal breaker with my site being live.So I really need ti figure out how to resolve this as I can't change how I ship do to the size and weight of my products.


Cheers

Absolutely! I have been so busy making changes and corrections I forgot to reply. Yes! Now that I know you can add the plugin multiple time, that completely handles my issue! I was able to configure the plugin, once for standard First Class Postage, once for First Class with Insurance Added (adds $1.89 to the price returned from USPS, and one more for Priority Mail Flat Rate Postage, based on a minimum weight of 14 Oz. with a Variable Container. With those 3 options, there is only one rare instance where it would not get the postage right, but I moved that particular product over to my Direct Sales Channel so that it's not available on the site.

Had I known you could do it this way, I likely would never have even bothered you guys. It might be a good idea to update the documentation so that newbies like myself understand that the USPS Plugin is not a one size fits all with a single instance of the Plugin configured and that you might need to configure multiple instances if your store requires multiple Shipping Classes.

Thank you so much, I will update that thread so others are aware of the solution.

Cheers Jerome!